May (2003)

May arrives from 2002 with the confidence of a film that knows exactly what it is and no interest in explaining itself to anyone. Angela Bettis plays the title character, a veterinary assistant whose childhood corrective lenses never quite corrected the deeper problem, which is that other people are not dolls and cannot be assembled to specification. Lucky McKee's debut concerns itself with obsession, isolation, and the specific loneliness of a woman who has been told all her life that she is difficult to look at. The film is a character study first and a slasher second, and it earns its final image, a moment of tenderness that most directors would not have the nerve to attempt.

The supporting cast includes Anna Faris as Polly, a colleague whose bisexuality and casual polyamorous household are presented as ordinary facts of her life, not as a statement. This is texture, not thesis. The film's lead is a woman, but she is a woman who murders five people and sews them into a companion, which complicates any reading of the material as empowerment. May's lazy eye is a source of childhood cruelty and adult shame, and the film treats it as such, which places it at some distance from any affirmation of the body. Her social awkwardness curdles into delusion and violence, framed as madness, not as a condition deserving of accommodation.

What remains is a moody, patient piece of work that shows its hand through imagery and lets the audience draw conclusions. There is no sermon here, no lesson delivered to the cheap seats. The film's politics, such as they are, amount to a woman wanting to be seen and being unable to arrange it. That is a thin platform for a movement and a sturdy one for a horror film. Cult status was the correct outcome.