Horror Month 2009/Movie Dictator Club: May (2002)

Horror Month 2009 combines with my dictation in the Movie Dictator Club for the month of October, 2009!

Written By: Lucky McKee
Directed By: Lucky McKee

I was on the fence about May, I wasn’t taken by it in any way, but I wasn’t turned away either, then two things happened to steer me towards my ultimate conclusion. One took place during the movie and the other took place after the film was over. Both deal with the same ideas and subject matter and both helped convince me that when all was said and done May was not a movie I cared for.

The first thing that turned me off of May was the scene involving the blind children and the glass. Up till that point I wasn’t buying much of what I was seeing but it wasn’t actively bad and there was still hope for it to maybe go somewhere interesting. The moment those kids started sifting through glass in one of the most idiotic scenes I have ever witnessed I checked myself out. I remained till the end, but what I watched after the glass scene was hollow and empty, without any meaning or purpose. Why would those kids dig through the glass like that? Why would the movie build it up as a suspenseful event and then try to milk it for all its worth when it isn’t plausible for one second? I know that I recently ranted about the need to just accept what you see sometimes, but it’s impossible to do that with May, but more on that in a second.

The second thing that turned me off of May was Roger Ebert’s review of the film. Over and over again he stressed how believable May was, how subtle of a horror movie it was, how scary it was and once again, how plausible the film was. I sat mouth agape wondering what film Mr. Ebert had watched because nothing he said described May. There wasn’t a moment in this film where anything seen on screen was plausible, and I didn’t have a problem with that until it became obvious that Lucky McKee’s goal was to make a plausible horror film. Every character we meet is unbelievable, the actions are impossible to buy into and from the get go May hits you over the head with the fact that May the character is weirder than weird. This isn’t a descent into madness like I believe the film was trying to express. This is a case of a woman who was insane from the get go and the people around her were apparently too stupid to see this.

I tried to like May, trust me thevoid99 (you don’t get a simple Void here mister, on my blog you will be spoken to in your full honorific) I really did, but it didn’t work for me. I never bought into the scenarios or characters, especially Anna Faris who overacted in some misguided attempt to be indie and weird. There was potential here, but the implausibility of what was presented versus what McKee was going for was something I wasn’t able to get past. At the very least I got to see Laynie from Everwood one more time, so there is that.

Rating:

**1/2

Cheers,
Bill