Review: May

First let me start off by saying that this movie is very creepy. If you’re easily creeped out by dolls with blank faces, or easily disturbed by stalker-ish personas, you can stop reading here. Go on. Are they gone yet? Okay.

This is a pretty confusing movie. There seems to be several different themes going on in the movie. Bits of humor, horror, thriller are strewn through the movie. Overall the film is pretty dark in it’s execution. For the most part this is not a horror movie. But it is at the same time.

The story is about May(Angela Bettis), a girl who never got the good end of life. Being a new kid in school is hard, but being diagnosed with lazy eye at a young age didn’t help her social life either. One of her birthdays she was given a doll as a gift. But being that things never worked out for her, she never was allowed to play with the doll either. Kind of like a play-with-your-eyes, not-your-hands attitude. Fast-forward to 17-18 year old May where her social skills haven’t, lets say leveled up yet and her best friend is still the doll that her parents gave her. Being a healthy young adult she finds herself with a crush on a boy named Adam (Jeremy Sisto) and with no ability to talk let alone make eye contact with him, their relationship has an unusual start. Maybe it was the part where she puts her chin on his hand in a coffee shop when he was taking a nap.

The movie really picks up the pace in creep factor around the 40-minute mark. While not to spoil too much lets just say May and Adam have a brush with some “cannibalistic” tendencies to which Adam freaks out a little nor is not pleased with.

Then there’s a weird scene where May decides to help out at the local daycare center. Her real motivation isn’t exactly revealed as to why she does that but hey, part of that indie like feel right?

It’s very clear that even through May’s trials and tribulations of lack of social life, the central focus is around the doll that was given to her. The glass keeps breaking around the case of the doll that represents some form of oppression that’s stopping her from her life. When the case is broken, her will to live pretty much goes bye bye and whatever life she had left goes downhill.

There’s something to be said about horror movies in this era of scary movies. May brings things down to perspective in horror films by not needing any monsters, aliens or ghosts. While Writer/Director Lucky McKee has something interesting here, it’s just not my cup of horror tea. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be that May a good old-fashioned creep fest by a socially awkward girl who grew up with no friends with a splash of dark comedy for good measure.

Netflix Rating Prediction: 3.5/5

My Rating: 2/5