May (2002)

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May(2002)

A psycho lesbian gore queen Carrie-ish film deserves a genre of its own

Writer/director Lucky McKee's Frankenstein/Carrie hybrid is touted as a modernization of the Dr. Frankenstein mythos, but in all honesty, it has about as much in common with Mary Shelley's novel as John Carpenter's Vampires does with Dracula, which is to say--a tad. Angela Bettis is May, a good-looking-girl-gone-misfit due to a lazy eye her mother tries to hide from the world during her childhood. May grows up to become an awkward, painfully inept adult who could give the Columbine kids something to feel good about--she spends most of her time watching the world pass her by and confiding in her best friend: a doll her mother gifted her with the sage advice: "When you can't find friends, make them." Talk about a Jerry Springer episode waiting to explode on home video.

May gets corrective contacts which give her the courage to approach local hunk Adam (Jeremy Sisto), he of the broad shoulders and "beautiful hands." While she tries to strike up a relationship with him, she also has to fend off advances from her hot lesbian co-worker Polly (Anna Faris, Scream II) and her doll's ever-growing jealousy over the life she is trying to lead. Eventually, May's social status begins to slip, and she begins to...but do you really need me to spell it out for you? From the film's opening ten minutes, it's just a matter of time before she hauls out her scalpel and starts conducting corrective surgery. Predictable, to say the least.

May is loaded with cliches: the gawky young adult beauty; the lesbians gushing sexuality (I mean, really, are lesbians in the real world ever that good-looking and easy?); the plot that couldn't possibly be original no matter how many contemporary rock songs you throw in. What the film does have working for it is Bettis' performance. She's not just shy--she's paralytically sociopathic, and while I'm hardpressed to explain why the rest of the cast doesn't pick up on this from day one (which would spare them from ever being in the same room with her, thus negating the plot), her attempts at seduction and integration leave you squirming in two parts embarassment, three parts dread. In one oh-God-that's-off-the-hook moment, May cozies up to Adam after he shows her his film school project: two couples, cavorting in the park, begin feasting off each others' bodies in a hysterical parody of springtime courting. The look on her face as she shifts her seat next to him is priceless.

Faris is doubly hysterical as the airheaded twat who makes love to May after getting her to take her cat off her hands, but she's given ridiculous lines which manage to submerge this otherwise amusing performance. "Do you like pussy?" she asks May, immediately amending it with "...cats? Pussycats?" Hey, I've tried that line plenty of times myself. No reason to believe it could work here either.

To give credit where credit is due, however, May does end on a level which, while no less disgusting, at least underscores the pathos McKee must have been trying to evoke throughout much of the story. With the new millenium's slew of plot-contrived slashers posing as genuine horror, a return to the eighties' blood-drenched psychology is refreshing, but the gore definitely eclipses the psychology here. Maybe if McKee finds two less obvious films to rip off the next time around, the outcome will be more satisfying. May I suggest The Mummy and Slumber Party Massacre? I can see plenty of potential with cloth and bandages alone.

-Long