May, 2002.
Directed by Lucky McKee.
Starring Angela Bettis, Anna Faris, Jeremy Sisto, Kevin Gage, James Duval, and Nichole Hiltz.
SYNOPSIS:
A troubled young woman descends into madness as she attempts to get herself noticed.
Second Sight continue their run of high-quality limited edition Blu-ray packages with the re-release of May, the 2002 debut of director Lucky McKee (The Woman/All Cheerleaders Die), and in terms of content this is one stacked set, but does the movie still stand up over 20 years later?
May (Angela Bettis) is a socially awkward young woman, having grown up with a mother who treated her more as an object than a person and also having a lazy eye that made her an outcast among her peers. Now grown up and working in a veterinary surgery, May wears a selection of contact lenses and glasses to mask her eye but she is still troubled about fitting in and being noticed.
One person who does notice her is her colleague Polly (Anna Faris), a permanently horny lesbian who sees May as another conquest, but May is desperate to get noticed by Adam (Jeremy Sisto), whom she sees in the street and begins to follow him everywhere in the hope he will see her. After a clumsy exchange where May becomes obsessed with Adam’s hands, the two begin to date but May mistakes Adam’s taste in Dario Argento horror movies and his claims that he is weird to mean that he is as unhinged as she is and takes things a bit too far, sending May further into a spiral of rejection and loneliness that results in her anxieties coming full circle.
A bizarre mix of Frankenstein and Carrie, May caused a bit of a stir back when it was released for its depictions of angst, self-harm and mental illness, and the horror at the core of the story is still enough to disturb when you break the movie down into its individual strands. However, the movie was made just after the turn of the century, before the rise of graphic torture porn and when the residues of 1990s indie filmmaking were still apparent, and nowadays May does feel more like a kooky black comedy from the decade previous to its original release rather than basking in the dark psychological trauma that the movies that came in its wake displayed.
But that isn’t to say May isn’t as hard hitting as something more graphic or violent, such as Richard Bates Jr.’s Excision, of which both movies share some similar ideas; in fact, it is the movie’s relative restraint that works in its favour, making the audience sympathise with May and building towards the climax, which is at once both tragic and shocking, even though it was always going to end that way. In the same way that we never totally feel that Carrie was the villain in her own story despite the destruction she causes, May too deserves our sympathies, as none of her troubles are her fault but a combination of those around her and circumstance.
None of this would work as well if it wasn’t for the performance of Angela Bettis as May, who plays the character with just the right balance of vulnerability, whimsy and sexiness, but the little inflections she gives May make her attractive without her even knowing it, to those onscreen and to those watching. Again, this makes her ultimate destination even more painful to watch, and Bettis is never anything less than magnetic. Jeremy Sisto is also excellent as Adam, who does occasionally slide towards being a jerk but he reins it in, Adam being just a regular guy who doesn’t want anything to do with this weird woman who keeps stalking him, and his reactions to her increasingly bizarre behaviour make him extremely relatable.
The other star of the show is director Lucky McKee, who seems to have come out of the stable almost fully formed as a filmmaker as May does display many of the same themes and stylistic flourishes that he would inject into later movies such as The Woman and The Woods, underplaying some of the darker elements that in other hands would have been exploited to the full and resulted in a very different movie.
Coming housed in a rigid slipcase that also contains a 70-page book featuring new essays by Joseph Dwyer, Rachel Knightley, Mary Beth McAndrews and Heather Wixson, plus art cards, the disc comes loaded with extra features, mostly interviews with various cast and crew – including Jeremy Sisto, Lucky McKee and cinematographer Steve Yedlin – and three audio commentaries, two of which feature Lucky McKee with various crew members and one brand new track from author/critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There is also a fascinating video essay by Miranda Corcoran that traces the history of Frankenstein and how May takes elements of Mary Shelley’s classic and twists them into something different but with similar themes.
As well as coming packed with so much bonus content, the movie itself looks fantastic, with the image being crisp and clear but with a layer of warmth, and the brighter colours popping out in a way that belies the fact that the movie is over 20 years old, resulting in one of Second Sight’s best Blu-ray transfers so far.
So, in answer to the original question, yes, May holds up incredibly well after all this time. In fact, it could even be more effective in the current climate of body image obsessions in the media and how mental illness gets handled. As previously stated, it isn’t as gory as one might expect given the nature of the story, although it still has moments of grisly violence that might have once not sat so well with the quirky black comedy elements but now seem to compliment them. In fact, the only real negative to throw at May is that there aren’t very many surprises when it comes to the overall story, ending exactly how it was telegraphed early on, and the motif of the doll that May is given by her mother is never given much of an explanation, with the movie language of disconnected parents seen in a flashback doing most of the talking. However, these few gripes aside, May is still a creepy and effective horror movie and this excellent box set from Second Sight ranks as one of their finest releases yet.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
