A friend of mine told me that she had a film she thought I should watch and review. And as every now and again RevanDesigns allows a special request or two to be taken under my wing I decided to go with this. This film had disturbed her and after my own viewing I can see why.
The film is called May and the only summary she gave me was along the lines of "Watch it, Oh my god watch it. She's like a loner and cuts pieces of people that she likes. AHAHAHAHAHA"
So before I even popped the dvd in I was worried about what my eyes were about to see. Oh and eyes mean alot in the context of this film.
May is indeed a lonely girl who suffers from some sort of lopsided eye syndrome. One of her eyes is offset and she needs special glasses or ointments ect. In her youth she had to wear an eyepatch, which probably was the main reason and beginning of her being outcasted and left alone.
She's also a weirdo. See you watch films where the loner dude or gal does odd things, things that the consensus laugh at or mock, but the viewer will ususally feel for the character and in some cases udnerstand their quirky actions and sympathise and aknowledge than not being like everyone else is cool.
Not in May though, oh lord not in May. She starts of as one of these clichéd defendable characters but quickly emerges from her shell of slightly bizarre to completely messed up rapidly. Her obssession with a car mechanic only gets more disturbing as the film progresses and it also gets pretty bloody. But the pivotal 'horror' part of the film isn't the scariest or most awkward. There's a scene where she SOMEHOW manages to get a date with the mechanic guy, who's hands she has fallen in love with. He finds her 'different' and interesting and despite the warning signs ends up taking her to bed. May gets ahead of herself and gets a lump of his lip in the midst of their date. His lip bleeds profusely and all May can do is rub the blood over her face making odd cooing noises. Mechanic Hands is obviously freaked out by this and decides to ultimately call it quits. Why he didn't call Dr.Phil or whoever the hell gave Dr.Phil credentials (cos that's gotta be a guy use to whackjobs) I don't know. He leaves and she rises from the bed confused as to what she could of possibly done wrong. Lets see....everything. Now at first I thought the horror/killing aspect of this film might come from the moment May and MechanicHands watch a short film he himself has made. It stars a couple in a park who start eating each other (steady) zombie style. MHands is curious to Mays reaction and May finds it to be a sweet story. You can see why I wondered if MHands would join her in some oddball slaughter spree. I was glad when he legged it. But unfortunately May knows no bounds, limits or restraining orders. She pursues him and he becomes her first victim.
But to understand my confusion you need to understand the pacing of this film. The murdering and 'collecting of body parts she most loves' doesn't happen until the last quarter of the film. The main chunk of this film is about May, the people around her who are oddly attracted to her and her naive childlike state. The most disturbing scenes are have nothing to do with murder. A scene involving a group of school children at a blind kids centre where May volunteers is the most horrifying part of the film. Mays obssession with her doll is consistent and sometimes you feel as if the doll is controlling May. But the fact that it's all May, all the time is what adds to the creepiness factor.
May is pursued in a seductive yet oddly abusive way by her co-worker, the moronic secretary played superbly by Anna Faris. She seems to find May fascinating and sets about trying to woo her. There's a point where she tries to seduce May and then asks her to look after her cat for a while (that doesn't end well for the cat). You think that she's merely flirting with May in order to get her to do stuff for her but later you realise that she really wants some sort narcissistic affair with her.
Everyone who May meets that has a handful of decent screentime ends up being chopped, sliced and gorroted. May hones in on a specific part of someones body, a part she finds appealing, attractive and loveable and then kills the person and detatches the body part from them.
What does she do with these body parts? Well she wants to make something...someone...a friend. Yes she's an expert seemtress our May and she shows of her taxidermy like skills by constructing this horrid franketstein like creature at the finale of the film. But one thing is missing an eye for which to see with. Yes May doesn't have enough time to run downstairs, out the building and jump on someone who has an attractive eye, so she decides "meh what the heck" and gouges her own eye out. It's nasty, mainly because of her screams. Any hope of this girl being aware of her actions and the world around her are dashed when she stabs her weak eye and yoinks it out. Then she crawls to the frankenfriend and places it on the head. Then the creepiest scene of all happens just before the credits role and the frankenfriend raises an arm and clutches her in a hug.
Did it really come alive or was it only in Mays deepest wishes?
Well personally I think it was all in Mays head. If the doll being some sort of evil controller were a part of the storyline I'd of thought the frankenfriend might have actually come alive, but it would serve no purpose to the film as this isn't a story of supernatural occurences. It's a story of a lonely girl, mentally disturbed and a bit too keen on what lies beneath your wooly mittens.
The film is surprsingly quiet for the most part, alot of cinematography will be focused on May, either from close up shots or from afar. Quite often these scenes will not be accompanied by any score or dleiberately obvious music and yet the soundtrack has some pretty rocky tracks. They start to kick in more around the time when May's deep anger and repression really shine or when she is commiting an act of murder.
If you want to watch something different that isn't standard by most released horror youth films and you really do want to be creeped out, then yes May does a good job despite it's quiet indie backdrop release.
4/5
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