May

"You know when you meet someone and you think you like them... but then the more talk to them, you see the parts that you don't like. And then sometimes you end up not liking any parts at all."

A few stitches onto a piece of yellow cloth followed by a single drop of blood is what opens MAY, one of the best horror films of 2003 in my opinion. You've more than likely seen the advertisement art for the movie before, an ashen faced, blue eyed, red lipped, crimson haired girl with a stare that sends shivers down your spine. MAY is first time director LUCKY MCKEE's supra-bizarre love story of an introverted outcast young girl who, no matter how hard she tries, can't seem to make friends, or at least, make living friends.

This engaging film starts to roll early on as a VERY viewer-friendly rollercoaster ride of sympathy for the unlucky lass MAY (just excellently played by actress ANGELA BETTIS) as she grows up in life, plagued by a terrible facial disfiguration of possessing the head-turning distraction of a lazy eye. She's also one of those type of girls who you probably know in real life that might not seem overly attractive in her general physical appearance but she has a certain curious sexiness to her that's often quite hard to explain to others. MAY casually swaggers into the thick of things as our girl learns the trials and tribulations of heterosexual as well as homosexual love between her potential victims, um, I mean co-workers and would-be boyfriends and girlfriends. But unfortunately, even though her eye is brought to normality due to special contact lenses, MAY's uber-eccentric behavior, for the most part, usually tends to run her perspective mate off before anything can turn into what she hopes will become a long lasting relationship.

MAY's best friend since childhood has always been SUZY, a special doll encased in a glass box given to her by her mother. The doll, who looks pretty fucking scary all by itself, seems to "speak" to MAY, giving her all her much needed advice and guidence on various aspects of life. You'll hear it too with the ever so slow creaking of broken glass. But MAY decides to leave SUZY behind to pursue real flesh and blood friendships. Enter our stud, ADAM (played by SIX FEET UNDER actor JEREMY SISTO), MAY's dreamy love interest, and POLLY (hamming it up by SCARY MOVIE actress ANNA FARIS), MAY's experimental lesbian encounter. But alas, as I said, things never work out for our poor girl and when the final boundary is eventually broke, MAY plunges headfirst into an abyss from which there will be no return. What happens next, you ask? Well, since people aren't 100% perfect, MAY decides to collect the various parts of them that are. So sit back and let the blood flow from here on out. And take my word on this, there won't be a happy ending.

MAY is essentially a nice new take to the whole BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN concept coupled with the outrageous modern gore and sick twisted humor you'd find in BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR. And as with any film about the complete and absolute mental breakdown of an already confused and unstable person, the story slowly sinks into somber depravity and despair giving the viewer that sheer overwhelming sense of "something very bad is gonna happen". And when it's all said and done, you'll leave the experience quite dejected and somewhat depressed, and not to mention, yearning for a beverage of the alcoholic persuasion.

They say every person has a great novel inside of them just waiting to be written, well, I think LUCKY MCKEE had a great movie inside of him just waiting to be told on celluloid. And, in my opinion, he certainly got it right with his first shot. As a horror fan, I think MAY hits all it's marks and I can honestly tell you that I'm eagerly looking foward to his next horror movie endeavor.