½—two and one half sticks of doom

I saw the indie film May a week ago and was totally freaked out by it. Afterward, I said to myself, "Why would anyone make a movie like that? It's so cruel and ugly." But the movie lingered in my brain, incubated, and finally grew into one of those huge, furry monsters like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I couldn't exorcise it. Things started occurring to me about the themes and structure—things I was too shocked to pay attention to—and I came to the understanding that there was way more stuff going on withMay than I had given it credit for.

Where to start with this movie? Not since the plays of Harold Pinter has there been a work so obsessed with eyes. From the eye patch May wears as a child, to the blind children she volunteers for, to the horrifying final sequence involving a pair of scissors put to discomfiting use, it's clear that filmmaker Lucky McKee's cinematic vision is all about...well...vision. There's just something about the eye that is sacrosanct, that is at once more powerful and more vulnerable than any other part of the body. It's the window to the world, of course, but there's more to it than that. For instance, I've been looking at medical manuscripts for several years now, and I've grown inured to the frank grisliness of most medical photos. I've seen pictures of smallpox, shark bites, and testicular elephantiasis. But when I edited a paper on eye injuries and was faced with a close-up photo of an eyeball with a fishhook through it, I couldn't stand to look for more than a fraction of a second. The visceral reaction was too much—I had to cover the photo with my coffee cup in order to proceed. Just think of "Un Chien Andalou," where the eyeball sliced with a razor has been making audiences lose their lunch since 1929. With May, the eye thing is used not only to startle us, but also to highlight the qualities of May's character. It's obvious from the start that all May wants is someone to "see" her, someone whose vision isn't obscured by veils upon veils of social constructs. It's also obvious that, in a world of shallow hipsters, she is doomed to be disappointed.

I didn't realize this was a horror film when I rented it, and I didn't figure it out until the last twenty minutes of the film, when all at once there was a whole lot of killing. Don't get me wrong—I was not surprised in the least by the deadly turn of events. Given the way May is captivated by certain parts of the people she knows (Jeremy Sisto, Anna Faris)—as well as the narrative repetition of her mother's advice to "make" a friend when you don't have one—you'd have to be a total moron not to see it coming. It's the fashion in which it's carried out that is disturbing. I would have been less shaken up by House of 1,000 Corpses, which is at least formulaic in its violence (or so I gather). Besides, the most disturbing scenes aren't even the extremely violent ones. There's a scene where May has brought a doll in a glass case to share with some blind children. Naturally, the kids want her to take it out of the case so they can touch it, but May resists. In the commotion, the case drops and the kids all start pawing through the glass, trying to find the doll. Their hands are cut up, there's blood everywhere, and it's pure horror. This goes back to the vision thing, too, because their hands are their way of seeing the world. They are in effect blinded a second time.

A word about the doll. This is a doll May's mother made for her, and of all the creepy dolls I've seen through years of scary films, this one wins the cookie for creepiest. The doll has a white, mask-like face with black eyes that are sunk far behind. The thing just screams "I'm evil! I'm evil!" The evil is not in the doll itself, of course, but in the meaning assigned to the doll by May. She screams at it when things are not going well, and later strokes its little glass case in a conciliatory fashion. It's her tormentor. It's a symbol of her failures. It's her oldest and best friend and, like Tom Hanks with the volleyball, she interacts with it as if it were alive.

May is played with tensile grace by Angela Bettis, who got covered in pig's blood in the recent TV movie remake of Stephen King's Carrie. May has a lot in common with Carrie White: they are both outsiders, virtually friendless and, above all, weird. What May has that Carrie didn't, though, is magnetism. May is incredibly fragile and socially awkward, but at times she can be quite beautiful (Bettis is one of those actresses who can turn her good looks on or off). The people around her are initially attracted to her, then put off by the degree of her weirdness. Even a good-natured punk calls her a freak when he finds a dead cat in her freezer. So May continues to suffer, just as it's clear she has suffered her entire life. Her desire to have someone care about her is overwhelming, as is her disappointment each time the relationship falls apart. When things end up at their inevitable, Mary Shelley-esque conclusion, you can't help but feel relieved that at least this project went as she planned. You're grateful someone finally threw her a bone (no pun intended).

Analysis: Kind of a patchwork of ideas, but clever and engaging.

Tags: movies