Fear 5/5Gore 5/5
Entertainment 5/5
Creepiness--This shit is off the charts.....
Interesting that this comes on the heels of Complaint's review of the quintessential freak-the-hell out at a creepy doll flick. Sweet Mary Margaret Thatcher of Macedonia this little number completely suprised me and turned me on my head. A completely disturbing mind fuck of a film, May stayed with me long after the final credits kept rolling. You know, the type of film that begs the question 'Did I just really see what I thunk I saw?'
May involves a loner of a girl (think Carrie; ironically enough the lead actress played Carrie in a made for TV version), made fun of by the neighborhood kids due to an eye deformity. Her mother gives her a doll encased in a glass box proclaiming that this will be the only friend that she will ever need. May grows a strong attachment to the doll, conversing with it and forging a relationship that she could only imagine having with normal kids.
Flash forward a few years and May the young 20-something, is adapting to life living in L.A. as a veterinarian's assistant. She's determined to break out of her shell (still ever the loner kid). She grasps at trying to establish real and meaningful relationships with odd individuals: a overtly lesbian coworker that only wants her for sex; a mechanic who makes snuff films in his spare time, whom she becomes disturbingly obsessed with. All of this she attempts only to be rebuked and go back to the one relationship that she has ever known--the one with her insanely creepy doll.
May begins to obssess not only over the fact that she can not form a relationship with anyone else (and in turn begins to actually resent the doll) but we also come to find out she has a fondness for doll parts. See May has a collection of other dolls and interchageably, she likes to 'experiment' and rearrange their parts. She carries over this fascination into her additional love of the human form noticing the features of the mechanic she desperately tries to pursue and the lesbian (and subsequently, her girlfriend) who tries to get into May's knickers. In the frustration of her relationship with the doll, and the lack of being able to build one with the other characters in her life, she breaks the glassed doll. After she realizes what she has done and that she no longer has her best friend, the movie devolves into sheer and utter madness. Everyone that she has been trying to establish a relationship with falls victim to her meticulous and devoid of any emotion, brutal and frightening attacks. The aftermath of which is a 'new' doll who supplants the old as her best friend.
May is one of the most shocking and disturbing movies that I've seen in awhile (or ever for that matter). Sure there are scenes of pure shock and grotesqueness but the way the main actress portrays the lead character is perhaps the most disturbing element. May seems so unassuming and innocent, the type of nerdy girl that no one would take to prom or would pay much attention to in school and by all accounts, harmless. Maybe thats why I chose to rent this based on her portrayal of Carrie in the remake. Nonetheless, in this film, she makes Carrie look like a saint and May is the patron of pure madness and insanity.
Cortez the Killer
