May (2002, Lucky McKee)

64/100

Spent a lot of May feeling as if there were just too damn much going on with May. You've got the lazy eye that makes her a social outcast (swiftly corrected); you've got the creepy-ass doll whose voice seems to intermittently be in her head; you've got her general attraction to all things sick and twisted, such that she not only gets turned on by the student-film version of Trouble Every Day but wants to re-enact it with her boyfriend; you've got her fixation on the blind girl (honestly never did quite understand why that was tossed into the mix); etc. Assembling something coherent from all those elements must've been a challenge (hi Rian!), and the film feels a bit scattershot for much of its first hour...but once you grasp that this is a Frankenstein riff—tipped for me by the expository clumsiness of May telling a dog owner that she can sew back its severed limb (a scene that looks grafted on by this very film's apparently inept veterinarian), plus her admiring other characters' hands, neck, so forth—well, what could be more appropriate than stitching such a movie together from multiple disparate influences? What really sells it, ultimately, is Angela Bettis' intense performance, and specifically May's abrupt shift in demeanor the moment she decides upon her project (which coincides with the doll's glass case shattering, so things do in fact dovetail); after so much painful shrinking-violet neediness, it's thrillingly cathartic to see her radiate fuck-you self-confidence, even in a deranged homicidal way. Also dug how McKee chose to shoot the gory stuff, keeping much of it offscreen (possibly budget-dictated, but it's effective) and aiming for chilling intimacy with what is shown; Anna Faris' fate disturbed me like few other [spoilers, let's just say she becomes the neck] I've seen, precisely because it's so still and quiet and (natch) almost surgical, looking more like a caress than an act of violence. Bonus points for a brutally efficient opening five minutes, compressing what would ordinarily take up more like 15 (hi Rian?), and scattered wry jokes like giallo fan Adam crediting himself on his short film with "Regia di" rather than "Directed by." Which of you 2003 Skandies voters gave points to Jennifer Connelly in House of Sand and Fog instead of Bettis? (That year's ballots are lost.) I hadn't seen May at the time, what's your excuse?