Tuesday, October 29, 2013

April Showers bring May...that's it

Ok we're entering the homestretch for this horror movie blogseries that I've had a blast writing as I've been able to revisit some awesome gems that lay forgotten in my DVD collection. I've found myself entranced by these movies, experiencing them all over again as if it were the first time. I've caught things that I either missed or forgot from the first viewing. Viewing them with the intent of sharing them, I watched them from a more critical, personal standpoint as opposed to a nice 90-120 minute distraction.

So, we come to #4 tonight and it is a dark, gothic little piece that I've never quite been able to shake. Lucky McKee's May.
 The film opens shockingly enough with a woman clutching her bloodied eye and screaming her lungs out and then cuts to the opening credits which is a haphazard assembly of patchwork and stitching.

We are soon introduced to our film's protagonist, May Kennedy, as a little girl. Her mother is obsessed with her daughter not being viewed as different or less-than other children as she suffers from a severe lazy eye, covered by an eyepatch.

Her mother tries to hide the eyepatch by positioning a lock of hair over it before leaving her at school. When she's out of sight May, in her first brazen display of quirky individuality, tucks the hair behind her ear, proudly sporting what she calls her "pirate patch."

May doesn't fit in...at all. And her mother, thinking she's doing her unfortunate daughter a favor says, "I always say...if you can't find friends...you MAKE them." She presents her daughter with a doll in a glass case, a creepy looking little humanoid creature known as "Suzie." When May tries to open the case to play with Suzie, her mother quickly chastises her. "Never take her out of the case...she's special."

Cut to modern day with May sowing one of her weird outfits and chatting with Suzie about guys she "met" during the day. Although she's proud of these meetings and tries to attach some kind of significance to them, we learn that of the two guys she met, she spoke to none of them.

One of them sat on a bench next to her and after seeing her insanely awkward smile, stands and moves away quickly, never to be seen again. The other, a man surveying a wrecked vehicle. The latter proves to play a huge role in the events that follow.

May soon becomes obsessed with the man she gazed on from afar, telling him, after multiple, extremely awkward run-ins, that he has beautiful hands. The two soon begin to date, May growing more confident in herself by being around him, but letting down her guard soon causes trouble.

May, being extremely socially awkward for most of her life, becomes guilty of oversharing and saying what's on her mind without a second thought, and acting on urges.

Adam shows her a short film he made in which a young couple is enjoying a picnic in the park that quickly turns into a cannibalism scene as the lovers  devour each other. May gets turned on by this and she and Adam begin to fool around with May getting rough and biting Adam's lip drawing blood.

Adam draws away from her quickly, confusing May as it was "just like in your movie..." Adam, disturbed, tells her that he needs to go and leaves May in a daze. Having noone else to blame, she turns on her "best friend" Suzie, screaming at her. "I told you to face the wall!"

Becoming frustrated with Adam's willful ignorance of her, she turns to her coworker, Polly (played by a just-starting-out Anna Faris) and soon begins a sexual relationship with her, only to find out days later that May is not the only girl that Polly is seeing.

Distraught and depressed, May soon begins to hear Suzie speaking to her.

May, desperate for friendship and connection, soon makes friends as she volunteers to help out at a blind school, one day bringing Suzie in for show and tell. The children challenge her to take her out of the case and to share her "special friend". They begin grabbing at the case, fighting May for control and  the glass case soon topples, shattering onto the floor. The children sense Suzie's liberation and begin scrambling over the floor, crawling over the shards of glass, turning the classroom into a blood bath as they clutch and claw at Suzie, still fighting with May and Suzie is soon torn apart, leaving May, for the first time, completely and utterly alone.

May's already fragile mental state suffers a break at this point as she begins to examine her relationships, questioning her friends'  love and loyalty for her.

The film, being a slow-burn character study up to this point, veers back into the horror territory as May begins to take control of her life and carve out her own identity, displaying complete confidence in herself. The last 30 minutes of the film escalates to a fever pitch with an ending that is completely shocking to behold and we realize just what led up to the opening scene with May screaming and clutching at her bloodied eye.

We see everything come together, masterfully. Our jaws drop as everything comes full circle. And everything comes to a head on Halloween night.

This film is a sad one to watch because you see May's awkwardness, her inability to relate to others around her. Her desperation to be seen, to connect. To not be the "weird girl". It's a heart wrenching ending, and is really fucking good.

 RottenTomatoes score: 69%
Drake Marcos rating: 5/5 pushy handicapped kids

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