May

MAY (18)

D: Lucky McKee

Lions Gate / 2 Loop (Marius Balchunas & Scott Sturgeon)

US 🇺🇸 2002 (released 2003)

93 mins

Horror/Drama

W: Lucky McKee

DP: Steve Yedlin

Ed: Debra Goldfield, Rian Johnson & Chris Sivertson

Mus: Jaye Barnes Luckett

Angela Bettis (May Dove Canady), Jeremy Sisto (Adam Stubbs), Anna Faris (Polly), Nichole Hiltz (Ambrosia), James Duval (Blank, the Punk Boy)

Angela Bettis truly is amazing in this independent horror that didn’t receive much success when it was released in 2003, but has become a cult favourite in the many years since.

Bettis plays the eponymous May, a shy, young woman with social anxiety due to growing up with a lazy eye condition and a rather unsupportive mother, whose solution was to give the young May a glass-encased doll named Suzie to be friends with.

Now in young adulthood, May completes an operation that fixes her eye and develops a crush on a mechanic who works close to the veterinarian surgery where she works as an assistant.  Following an ill-fated romance with the mechanic & let down by others she felt were her friends, May begins a descent into madness and murder.

The film could really be viewed as a black comedy as much as it is a psychological horror film, and I feel that writer-director Lucky McKee was a little undecided in that during the filming process, though it’s something that can be easily forgiven as it is a debut feature for them, and it certainly isn’t a bad start to cut your teeth.  Another positive is the performance of Anna Faris, with arguably her finest work on film, but it’s the lead performance of Angela Bettis that not only carries this film, it’s one of the greatest acting performances of the year.

7/10