Much has been made in horror criticism about the genre’s ability (or lack thereof) to explore trauma. Less a part of the critical zeitgeist has been horror’s capacity to plunge us into other kinds of emotional pain: loneliness, self-hatred, and frustration. But it is this side of the human experience that allows Lucky McKee’s May (2002) to transcend its twee aughts trappings and stand out among the era’s genre offerings.
Set in Los Angeles—mostly around Silver Lake, in its first major round of gentrification—May stars Angela Bettis (who would cement her waifish scream queendom with Tobe Hooper’s Toolbox Murders two years later) as the titular outcast, a veterinary tech with a lazy eye. She becomes fixated on her neighbor, Adam (Jeremy Sisto, of Clueless and Six Feet Under fame), and particularly on his broad, elegant hands. Thinking she’s found a kindred misfit, May goes on a few dates with Adam, but her frequent faux pas doom their relationship. These moments of going a little too far—telling an abjectly disturbing story about a dog’s weak stitches when Adam asks her for “gross” work anecdotes, biting his lip too hard after he shows her his campy short film about romantic cannibalism—are as heartbreaking as they are awkward. As any victim of bullying and ostracization knows, it’s dangerous to get too comfortable.
Full-throatedly committed to his genre, McKee gives May ample opportunity for revenge against the world that has closed her out, but her gory retributory act is more piteous than it is cathartic. In homemade patchwork clothes and pigtails, Bettis as May is an avatar for the kind of quirky white femininity that predominated in the independent cinema of the 2000s. Rather than inaugurating that phenomenon, however, May reveals its limits; its protagonist is no one’s dream girl, nor is she a villainous femme fatale in the tradition of the erotic thrillers that preceded her.
Anna Faris and James Duval both appear in supporting roles in May. Veterans of two very different cycles of sardonic teen horror (Scary Movie and Gregg Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy,” respectively), they bring the absurdity and nihilism of the past decade’s youth culture to a more grown-up story. May’s tragedy lies in her earnestness; a weirdo unprotected by irony is too weird for early-aughts L.A., and maybe too weird for the world.
May screens tonight, October 21, at Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn as part of the series “Terror Tuesday.”
