Best Horror Movie You Never Saw: May (2002)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Welcome to Arrow in the Head's The Best Horror Movie You Never Saw, which will be dedicated to highlighting horror films that, for one reason or another, don't get as much love as we think they should. We know plenty of you horror hounds out there will have seen many of the movies we pick, but there will be plenty of you who have not. This column is for all of you!

This week we're taking a gander at Lucky McKee's chilling MAY (WATCH IT HERE), starring Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto and Anna Faris!

THE STORY: May is a socially awkward veterinary assistant who yearns to make a connection with someone, anyone. One day, she spots brooding mechanic Adam, whose bad boy demeanor and strong hands immediately fascinate her. May's infatuation turns into obsession, and her single-minded desperation for a friend soon becomes deadly for everyone around her.

THE HISTORY: Director Lucky McKee wrote the script for MAY during his junior year at USC. A friend at school had wanted to make the movie while they were still in college, but it didn't happen. Four years later, that friend started a production company and recalled McKee's script and contacted the writer to see if he was still interested in getting it made.

For the role of May, the lonely, disturbed protagonist, McKee evidently auditioned dozens of young women in Hollywood – Emilie de Ravin (Lost) and Elisha Cuthbert (24) among them. When he met Angela Bettis, he felt the actress knew the character and wanted the role more than anyone else, and the role was hers.

MAY made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival where Lionsgate immediately bought it. McKee on the experience:

It was amazing to show it for the first time, because we’d been working on it for so long that I was nervous that people wouldn’t understand the strange sense of humor that it has. It was a fantastic midnight screening, everyone was just laughing, uncomfortable, emotional, just feeling a whole bunch of different emotions, and Lionsgate just jumped right in there and snatched it up." Lucky McKee, Cult Projections

WHY IT'S GREAT: Sometimes the scariest things are an uncomfortable silence, an improperly-timed confession, an awkward display of intimacy. MAY, Lucky McKee's debut feature, has plenty such moments. In addition to more tangible horror movie stuff, MAY is one long cringe-inducing spectacle, involving us in the life of a character we simultaneously find objectionable and compelling. When McKee isn't grossing us out with nasty bits of body horror (he saves most of this for the third act), he's making us a party to the very sad, very weird lifestyle of the titular character, played by Angela Bettis. Bettis is really the whole show here, giving a terrific performance as a character who is, shall we say, complicated.

May is a great paradox of a protagonist: sympathetic yet off-putting; intriguing yet irritating. She invites our pity because she's distressingly insecure and incapable of making genuine connections with people, yet she's also superficial, needy and, of course, deranged. She's like that kid in school you felt sorry for because they always got bullied, but at the same time you wanted to shout "would you stop being so weird!" in their face. Regardless, by the time the film is over, when the depths of May's unbalance have fully been explored, we've come to accept her for who she is. Some might despise her, some might pity her even more, but there's no question she's proven herself a full-blooded protagonist worthy of the time we've invested in her.

MAY was personal stuff, it was personal expression done through a tremendous group of people. If peoples' hearts and minds are headed in the right direction you'll get some cool results. Everyone that worked on MAY were obviously not doing it for the money. They liked the story and got it, they enjoyed themselves while they were working on it and that all came on to the screen." – Lucky McKee, Icons of Fright

Oddly enough, the film I think of first when making a comparison to MAY is TAXI DRIVER. Not very similar on the surface, no, but both are about outsiders whose sadness and self-loathing lead them to grotesque displays of affection for the ones they can't (shouldn't?) have. Neither Travis Bickle nor May can relate to people in a "normal" fashion, and their attempts at romance are trivial and perverse, so they do the only thing that comes naturally: they lash out. In May's case, she been building toward something that perhaps even she didn't know was possible. She doesn't really love Adam (the pretentious bro played by Jeremy Sisto) or Polly (the comically flirtatious lesbian played by Anna Faris); she loves parts of them. As mentioned before, she's actually quite superficial about what she wants, despite her tragic yearning for companionship. When all the blood has dried, May wants the perfect friend; for all her faults, she's not very willing to accept the faults of others.

McKee's film has an odd tone, fittingly. It's grounded in reality just enough and yet there's that atmosphere of a twisted fairy tale hovering just above everything. It's the way he peppers in creepy music, they way he'll slow things down, the way animals and children frequently enter the frame to provide a facade of innocence. And there's that doll. May's only friend is a doll named Suzy, and let's just say that it gets easy entry into the pantheon of creepy movie dolls. There's another doll of sorts waiting at the tail end of the film, but the less said about her, the better. If you've seen the movie, you know her deal. If you haven't seen it, well, "Amy" is worth the wait.

"I’m just surprised people still talk about it, and it means a lot when people come up to me and tell me how much the movie means to them, emotionally. People tell me the movie has helped them get through hard times." – Lucky McKee, Cult Projections

Fun fact: MAY's editor was THE LAST JEDI/LOOPER director Rian Johnson.

BEST SCENE: Hard to choose here, but I'm going to go with the final minute of the movie. It's sad, it's disturbing, it's startling. It's the perfect ending for this film.

BUY IT: MAY is available to purchase on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

PARTING SHOT: If you're into creepy, unnerving, uncomfortable films that chill your spine and warm your heart (you know who you are, you sickos!), MAY is a deliciously bittersweet treat. Watch it with someone you trust.

WATCH IT HERE