Review from Eat My Brains

May looks for love. She finds it, sort of...

by Jim, Rawshark & Zomblee

Jim

Since it came out back in 2002, I'd had my eye on this movie. I read the buzz, watched it miss the cinema in the UK and head straight to video. Then I watched it slip off the shelf and into the ex-rental bin, then from said bin to my shelf at home, where it stayed for months and months waiting for an evening when I'd be 'in the mood' to watch something like I knew May was going to be, i.e. slow and not as action packed as I prefer (yes, I am fickle). Imagine my surprise then, and embarrassment almost, when I finally watched this little gem and discovered that it's quite possibly the best little movie that I'd never seen - I guess you learn something new every day.

As a child, May had very few friends - she was born with a very lazy eye, had to wear a patch most of the time and, well, you know how spiteful kids can be. Growing up things were similar - potential friends bailed as soon as they saw that wonky eye of hers - and as a grown-up she only really has one friend. At an early birthday (recalled to us through that popular cinematic tool - the flashback) her mother said to her "If you can't find a friend, make one" and gave her a creepy doll in a glass case. This is the friend I was talking about. Yes, she talks to it. Yes, it's creepy.

However, the movie starts with May getting a set of contacts which fix her lazy eye and - for the first time ever - she looks... normal, beautiful even. But is May ready for normal life? How does she juggle her new friends with her old, err, one? And does May actually like people or is she just into bits of people? I mean, Adam (Jeremy Sisto) does have beautiful hands and Polly (Anna Faris) indeed has a beautiful neck but is the rest of them any good? It's a shame you can't just take the best bits of the people you like and make a new one...

A complete change from the Zombie Club norm, May was something of a revelation ("It's like a proper, proper film" - Zomblee). The world in which May lives could almost be called Alt-America - it's trashy middle-America but with an alt-rock soundtrack (Pixies, Breeders, you know...) and without the clichéd white picket fence. It's the sort of place where anything goes on Halloween night ("That was a big leg!" - Zomblee) and where super-sexy movie lesbians cheerleaders live next door ("They're never like that in real life!" - Rawshark). And it's the sort of place where cute veterinary nurses can hide their dead cling-wrapped cat in the freezer, only for a punk with really big hair to discover it and accuse her of being crazy ("coming from a guy who's hair that makes him look like a cock!" - Rawshark). All in all one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time, and an instant classic in the making. This Lucky McGee fella might be worth looking out for in the future.

"I don't think she could've gotten his whole finger in one bite though, that bit was a little far fetched."

Rawshark

Jim’s absolutely right - May is one of those movies that sits unwanted (rather like May herself) on the DVD shelves, her gothic face, surrounded by some sort of religious halo, staring out at us, pleading for us to sympathise. Of course, most of us ignored it in the cinema and everywhere else, which is a real shame, as May is a quite wonderful (although very creepy) little movie.

Spooky opening aside, May comes across as mostly sympathetic, thanks largely to a phenomenal turn from Angela Bettis in the titular role. Even though she’s prone to pricking her fingers with scalpels, chatting to glass-encased dolls, and has an obsession with knives and sewing, Angela Bettis’ performance as the shy outsider is breathtaking and certainly pulls on your empathy strings (“I need a friend. Someone I can hold.”). It does help that she’s strangely attractive (“She’s absolutely stunning!” – Jim), but the thing that really did it for me is when she sat down in Adam’s flat to watch his extraordinary (film-within-a-film!) black and white zombie love short – Jack and Jill. Any girl that happily watches homemade zombie films (and offers constructive criticism) is a top girl in my book.

Lucky McGee’s direction is assured and rock-steady, with some nice cinematography and beautiful editing. The soundtrack (Breeders, Pixies etc) is great and fits the film perfectly, and there’s plenty of humour too, with the man with a three-legged dog being a highlight. It’s tender, it’s touching, and totally engaging, and when things finally start going right for May (she gets the guy, and also gets the girl too in the form of Scary Movie’s Anna Faris), we’re totally on her side, hoping that she can keep it all together.

She doesn’t of course - that bloody doll of hers will keep talking to her – and when two rejections in one day lead to her (accidentally?) killing the cat, all hell starts to break loose, and we realise she probably is a little bit crazy after all. Yet, you know, even as the film heads towards it’s pretty gruesome climax as May starts chopping people up, we’re (if even only a tiny bit) still on her side, and come the end, as she lies holding her friend’s arms, pleading with him (her?) to see her, we realise that she has finally found the peace she has been looking for all along. May(be).

“When I left for vacation, my dog had four legs! Now it has three! I throw a stick and nothing happens!”

Zomblee

Rawshark and Jim are both wrong. Only joking, I just wanted to disagree for the sake of it. In fact, they’re both spot-on and this is one Zombie Club film we all loved every minute of. I would have no inclination whatsoever to rent this film so thanks guys for continuing to enrich my somewhat 70’s obsessed celluloid palette. The most often said line at Zombie Club must surely be "I would never have seen this movie if it wasn’t for Zombie Club!" (well, that and "It’s a really good transfer isn’t it!") and tonight was no exception.

Angela Bettis, as you May have already guessed, really is superb. Her role in May certainly gives her enough space to show what she’s capable of and it’d be one hell of a struggle to find any other horror story worthy enough to let her express her range of abilities. Any other half-decent actress could have stepped into her shoes to play Nell in tonight’s next film, The Toolbox Murders, but this is much less likely to be the case with May. The role looks both demanding and challenging; her ability to evoke contrasting reactions is a surefire sign of special talent. More often than not in this game, less is more and it looks like Bettis knows the score, how to play, and how to win.

Bettis is not the only thing May has to offer. Certain scenes and devices are undeniably potent. For example, her creepy doll’s glass box which, after she bashes it and it cracks slightly, continues to crack bit by bit, little by little, throughout the rest of the film. The sound of this cracking glass is particularly enhanced to make the viewer feel as uncomfortable as possible in order to reflect May’s turmoil. It’s such a nice touch, and the theme is developed further in a disturbing scene involving crawling blind children and shattered glass on the floor.

Jeremy Sisto ("…from John Travolta’s loins" – Rawshark) who plays May’s initial love interest is good and plays the kind of character you don’t want to see being disposed of. His character’s love of Dario Argento will endear genre fans and although he seems like an "in control" kind of guy, we have every reason to be scared for him. Anna Faris plays Polly, May’s ditzy work colleague and a hot lesbian ("Ah…these are film lesbians aren’t they!" Rawshark astutely observed. He’s right too, they never look as good as Anna Faris in real life) who furnishes May’s descent with some genuinely well-written and performed comic relief.

Twisted, bizarre, sad, funny and quirky, May performs a fair degree of genre flirting before finding itself where it really wants to be – the good old World of Horror. The ending is nothing short of perversely beautiful. Most of what happens everywhere else in the film is nothing short of perversely beautiful, too.

"So many pretty parts, but no pretty wholes."

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