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May - 6/03 - R - 95m
Angela
Bettis - May Canady
Jeremy Sisto - Adam Stubbs
Anna Faris - Polly
Director: Lucky McKee
Written by: Lucky McKee
Official
Website
JEF
I almost went with a yellow light for this movie, but pushed
it up to a green just because of it's creepy-ness. There was some not-so-good
acting, and possibly faults among the direction and it was almost too
weird for me, but that was the point.
Storyline: The movie starts with an introduction to May
as a young girl of about 10-12. She has a “lazy eye” that
makes her look cross-eyed. Her mother tries to cover this with an ugly,
oversized black eye-patch, and then pushing her hair down in front of
her face to cover that. You can see at this point, that perhaps the mother
was trying to help, but something about the way she did it, made things
worse for May. So because of this large out-of-place eye patch, May had
problems making new friends. So again, her mother steps in to try and
help, by giving her a doll that she made. But… with the same little
twist, May is not allowed to take to doll out of her glass case. So you
can see that May is headed for some psychological problems further down
the road here… to say the least.
May is a bit like a modern day tale of Frankenstein. Due to the trailer
of the movie, you can kinda see where this storyline is going to take
us. That was one of my problems with this movie was that there were no
real surprises in this gothic tale of horror. But… that being said…
I’m not so sure that was entirely a negative thing. Sometimes it’s
nice to be surprised or scared with a sudden twist of events, but in the
case of May, because you can see what is about to happen, there is this
strange sort of build of horror as you see the events unfold.
Angela Bettis played the lead role of May and did a good job with this
role, but I sensed a bit of confusion with her character. I’m not
sure if this was the fault of the storyline or script, or if it was the
fault of the director “Lucky McKee”. Because I sensed this
same sort of “awkwardness” with all the characters, I’m
leaning towards the director’s fault.
May finds a boyfriend Adam, played by Jeremy Sisto. Adam was supposed
to be this weird sort of character too. He brings May in to show him some
of his art, and shows her a student film that was pretty twisted, (which
wasn’t bad either). But something about his character was not convincing.
He just struck me as too “normal” to play this sort of twisted
love interest of May.
I was also impressed with the roll of Polly, (Anna Faris), who was May’s
work/girlfriend. Anna Farris did a good job with this role, and I would
compare her acting style to that of Julliette Lewis (which I like).
Maybe I’m showing my age here too, but all of these characters were
holding down full time jobs, and they just really looked too young to
me. May was an assistant to a veterinarian, which I assume would need
some sort of college medical training - she barely looked like she was
out of high school yet.
But… before I go too far with these criticisms, lets not forget
this is a horror movie. Horror movies have a long history of being bad.
Either poorly acted, or stupid plots, or just a slasher style movie with
the same old characters over and over (ahem… Jason vs. Freddy?).
So in this regards, I do think May stands above many other films in the
horror category. It was a somewhat original in its twisting of the Frankenstein
tale. And the suspense was there even though you knew something was about
to happen.
As several of the characters in the movie said, “I like weird, but
not THAT weird” that was somewhat how I felt about this movie overall.
Because of the level of psychological trauma that May suffered, and then
to mix in the blood and gore, was almost a bit too much to take.
But as far as horror movies go, I’d say this is a decent film. Flawed
in a few areas, and maybe with some cuts and slashes from the director,
could have been better, it still left you with a feeling of creepy revulsion
after it was over. Which for a horror movie to do, I’d say it succeeded.
Jef
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