Title: May
Release Date: 2002
Written and Directed by: Lucky McKee

Cast:
May: Angela Bettis
Polly: Anna Faris
Adam: Jeremy Sisto


Ever see one of those movies that is so utterly ridiculous, so painful to watch, that you can't really figure out why you are watching it, except perhaps a vague desire to see how it ends? Well if not, go out right now and rent May. About three-quarters of the way through May, I realized that perhaps the only intrinsic value of the film was the potential of getting an amusing writeup out of it. So, dear noders, what you are about to read represents 93 minutes of giggling, groaning, and cries of "DEAR GOD THAT IS FUCKED UP!" on my part. Enjoy!

May is a creative but shy young lady who is afflicted with a dreadful malady... LAZY EYE! When we meet May she is a blond, elfin creature wearing a HUGE black eye patch, lovingly put in place by her ever-grinning mother. She is about eight years old, and the scenes of her as a child show us the following pivotal events in her life:

1.) She is alienated at school because she looks like a pirate.

2.) She is given a "special" doll named Susie in a glass box. "If you don't have any friends, make your own!" advises May's mother, who herself made Susie. This, you see, is ominous foreshadowing.

Flash forward to May as an adult, presumably in her early twenties. She works at an animal hospital as a veterinary assistant. She spends her work days helping with surgery, stabbing her thumbs with a scalpel ("to relax"), and trying to figure out how to respond to the advances of her sexually agressive coworker, Polly, played by that chick from Scary Movie. On one of her breaks, she notices a handsome young man working on a car. "He has such beautiful hands!" May, since she has no social skills to speak of (her only friend up until this point has been Susie the doll), has some difficulty striking up a conversation with Mr. Prettyhands, but eventually manages to get his attention by rubbing his hands on her face when he falls asleep at a coffee shop. The guy's name is Adam, and though he is a weirdo who likes to make art with barbed wire and movies about erotic cannibalism between two living people, he is nowhere near as weird as May.

May is a neurotic, tremulous little weirdo who would almost be cute if she weren't such a nutcase. She is an excellent seamstress (more FORESHADOWING...) and actually comes up with some spiffy little outfits. Her style is bold and original. She runs into Adam at the laundromat, where he compliments her homemade clothes. The two of them have a moment, and start going out informally.

Their dates actually seem promising until May starts biting Adam. He is not really into the whole blood-and-pain aspect of courtship, so he starts avoiding May. May, who is certainly incredibly sexually repressed, seeks solace in the perpetually stoned-sounding Polly. Polly finds May's weirdness and propensity toward knife play alluring. There are some mild lesbian makeout scenes in this movie, but it is hard to find them arousing since the characters are so utterly...fucked up. Polly convinces May to baby-sit her cat, Loopy. Here we have such unforgettable lines as "You like pussy, don't you? Pussy...cat!"

There is sort of a bizarre subplot about eyes and blindness. When lunching in the park with Adam one day, May notices a group of blind children. She gets it into her head that she ought to volunteer to help supervise these kids; there was one blind girl who seemed to always be off by herself, and May presumably identified with her. She simply goes to the school and asks to volunteer. No character interviews, no background checks. May's mannerisms are so bizarre that I certainly would not have let her near any children I was responsible for. This volunteer effort culminates in a very disturbing scene involving lots of blood, broken glass, and screaming children. No police are called, no irate parents call in demanding to know why their little blind kids were permitted to play around broken glass. May simply goes home, covered in blood, and proceeds to kill Polly's cat.

After Loopy's untimely demise via a well-aimed ashtray, May loses any semblance of self control she may have had. Her mannerisms do become more confident; she doesn't tremble as much, and she starts aggresively going after what she wants. What she wants most of all is a friend, a perfect friend. Yet she doesn't know anyone who is totally perfect, just people who have one or two perfect parts. You can guess what happens next. The last twenty minutes or so of the film consist of little May, merrily tromping through the neighborhood with her bag of surgical tools and her industrial-size cooler. Luckily, it is Halloween, so everyone assumes that May is in costume.

Just in case anyone is actually planning to rent this movie, I will not reveal EXACTLY how it ends. Suffice it to say it is very painful, very wrong, and very, very ridiculous. If I had to rate this movie it certainly wouldn't be on any sort of system that uses stars...maybe it would score three severed heads and a spleen?

This was not so much a scary movie as a funny movie. I can't tell if the humor was intentional or not, but the DVD case gave no indication of this with such comments as "Startling, compelling, and truly original!" and "Shivery and seductive, May is a delicious little creepathon". I can't imagine anyone actually taking this film seriously. It was so bizarre, so gross, and so implausible that it became utterly silly.