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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

May: SPOILERS

12:20 / 28.07.03

Apologies if there has been a thread about this film already, but I couldn't find it.

Anyhow, I watched this film last night and I didn't know much about it from the outset, except that it was a horror. But I was a expecting a run of the mill instantly forgettable horror. Instead, I got a very intense, constantly discomforting experience that reminded me that I'm not as hard as all that (in the last scene, which is drawn out almost excessively, I found it very hard to actually look at the screen.)

SPOILER CITY

You might say that the film is a bit derivative. Its a bit Carrie, the lead actress apparently played Carrie in the remake, and the premise is one that crosses Frankenstein with a slasher flick. But it is in the way you are led to sympathise with this desperately awkward woman. I found watching her clumsy physicality and total absence of social skills painful and, despite myself, invested a lot in wishing things were better for her.

So when she does actually become more confident, all it does is accentuates the horror, because her confidence is a consequence of her falling off the deep end and her realisation that she needs to accumulate the appropriate "bits" to make her perfect friend. Having empathised with her so strongly, it is a jolt when she starts carving up bodies. Especially since we almost understand her reasons.

Lots more to say about the film, like the way it contrasts the sharply proscribed "weirdness" of May's love interests with her own genuine oddness. The love scene with Adam after the "sweet" movie and his rejection of her epitomises this. As he departs syaing, "Not that weird...", it is an admission that his eccentricities lie pretty firmly within a rather predicatable comfort zone.

14:09 / 28.07.03

I've heard this film described as Amelie meets Lady Frankenstein.

Here's hoping for a US release sometime soon.

18:36 / 15.08.03

SPOILERS ahoy

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For a chronosynchristic review, which is all i can give right now --

Initially, lots of sympath for May - poor social skills as a result of how you were raised leading to problems in later life.

She does well mind, "decent" job.

Painfull echoes of RL..., phoning, then the immediate cheking of voicenail.

Seeing someone and not knowing how to interact. (personally, I fall in love at least twice a week on the train to work

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Her fixation on physical perfection (hands, "gams"), seemed shallow, untill her revelation she had never had a BF. >> She cant interact on anything other than a physical level, because thats the only touch she has with other people.

Last scene. Echoed in the first one in sub-flash. So you know what's coming. Thats what's bad, you know she's gonna do it, and it draws it out, that was a real "watch through the fingers" moment, more due to the anticipaitin than else. Nasty.

Ending - copout?? - it was a drama about the lost and lonely. It turned into a fairytale. Im still not sure which I would hav liked
more. Drama probs.

21:54 / 15.08.03

Here's hoping for a US release sometime soon

My local lackluster video had it on DVD.

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The fact that the main character was so skinny and awkward that you'd think a good shove would just knock her down, yet took apart all those people was (I think) part of what made it so scary. Freddy, Jason, the Blob, they lack humanity. And while I could see May's reasons for killing her victims, it wasn't like they did anything death-worthy. Creepy humanity from start to finish.

All in all, I dug it. Like Lurid, it reminded me that I can still wince and be tempted to look away.

22:38 / 15.08.03

Kung-Fu pedant ahhoy - she hit some good spots for killing- - gamd irl - temples - thin bone, lesbian // dog home girl -main vein, other gut, straight through the brain "need to stronger than arnie to do that IRL), bbut all veryneat compared to her final mutilation.

20:48 / 22.08.03

I expect this film may get cult status as it is one of the best horror films I have seen in a while. I know what you mean, Duncan, about the drift away from drama and toward horror in the film. But, all in all, it worked for me. The fact that May has quite serious problems is pretty clear from the outset. That doesn't *have* to lead to murder and mutilation of course, but the morbidity and lack of human empathy that the main character has make it a fairly natural transition.

Its interesting because I would say the opposite about a film like Donnie Darko, where I felt the time travel stuff spoiled the film, jarring me from my interest in the main character. Here I liked it because I believed and was fascinated by May's evolution.

I still can't decide about the initial scene, though. It worked, as the mounting dread pushed you inexorably toward a place you didn't want to be, but something was lost as well, revealing a bit too much about the film's direction.

12:05 / 31.08.03

When I talked about the move from horror to fairytale, the turning point wasn't the killing, that was a logical (albeit nasty) turning point, it was the very last scene of the film where the hand strokes her face, that was the one which slightly turned it.

It was "real" and then "horror", but the frankenstein bit lessened the film's impact slightly.

There were some very nice touches though, like the sound effects of the dolls case cracking parallelling May cracking up herself.

16:57 / 31.08.03

Thats interesting. I actually thought that there were two ways to take that seen. One could take it literally, as the successful culmination of her efforts or one could see it as May's descent into madness and hallucination. Perhaps you could even see it as a scene where May's obsession has given metaphorical life to her creation, given that it has been her prime motivation for the latter part of the film. Not that these points of view are mutually exclusive.

I thought it worked, anyhow.

19:55 / 02.09.03

I am an incredibly literal kind of chap, so I tend to interpret things that way.

I do get your point though, but for me, unless we have other wish fulfillment sequences blurring reality in the film, or see the final shot from May's (now depth impaired) point of view, my/our the viewers scene is the "objective" reality. Although that probably has more to do with the way I interpret film than anything else.

14:02 / 07.09.03

I saw this last night, thanks entirely to this thread. I liked it a lot, I thought May particularly was well-acted, and even the semi-comedic lesbian/vet secretary girl was alright, didn't jar too much. And the 'see me' stuff with her creation at the end was *incredibly* poignant.

Interesting all round, specially as most (mainstream, at least) so-called 'horror' films are really easy to watch - and this one wasn't, not so much because of the blood and gore bits (I thought some of the 'horror' bits were a bit, well, shit, in some ways - but I don't actually think that mattered too much), but because of May's awkwardness and the sense of impending doom.

Felt awfully sorry for her. And I always find the sense that you could befriend someone who ends up wanting to cut bits off you very unsettling.

20:40 / 08.09.03

Ah, but the question is did you also pick up the sense of doom from that first flash frame forward. That really interests me as as a spoiler and a tension builder at the same time.

20:57 / 08.09.03

Well...the thing is, you know you're getting a horror film, right? You've probably read the back of the box in the video shop or whatever... Really, you never come to any film completely devoid of expectation. So I think the run-in doesn't really make all that much difference.

I dunno - perhaps if I hadn't read this thread first, I would have been more bothered by the spoilery opening credits... I guess I can't say for sure now. I think it probably does affect the way the audience experiences the film, but I don't actually think it matters, for the same reasons that the crappy gory bits don't really matter. I think the film was 'odd' enough to just accept on its own terms - though I'm not really thinking that clearly at the moment, and it's entirely possible I'm just talking shite.

22:25 / 08.09.03

It is hard to say, isn't it? I went into the film not knowing anything about it and found that the flash forward was quickly put to the back of my mind, but definitely contributed to a sense of dread. I suppose that that was coherent with the way the film works. Its not supposed to be a surprise at any stage, but you end up hoping that everything will be ok when you *know* it won't be.

Chol: You've obviously got a stronger stomach than me if you thought the gore was poor. I was pretty involved in the story and I thought that it worked pretty well, for a change.

19:40 / 15.09.03

I think it makes a lot, you know it's getting nasty, but you forget the intro during the film, until the bit where she says "oh, but you can't see" or words to that effect, and it's the apprehension from that point of realisation, 'till the act itself that is the most uncumfortable and disturbing part of the film regardless of the gore that has gone before.