The underrated 2002 horror movie that Roger Ebert called a “portrait of madness and sadness”
Roger Ebert wasn’t the biggest horror fan on the block, often finding the genre a little too exploitative or simply too violent for his tastes, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t recognise a good horror movie when he saw one, citing the likes of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Peeping Tom as some of his favourites.
During his time as a critic, he managed to catch many movies, including those of the horror variety, which have since flown under the radar. Somehow, Ebert hardly missed a new release; granted, reviewing movies was his job, but he still managed to tally up an impressive number of reviews that included practically any movie you could think of.
One of these was the underrated horror film May, which he gave a full four out of four stars. Yet, these days, it’s a hardly remembered gem that deserves to be rediscovered, led by an unforgettable performance by Angela Bettis. Directed by Lucky McKee, the film follows Bettis’ titular character, a shy young woman bullied as a child for her lazy eye, who works as a veterinarian assistant.
She spends most of her time alone, counting a doll that her mother gave her as a child as her only true friend, while longing to be loved and seen, and these feelings of insecurity, ostracism, and loneliness inevitably morph into something much more strange and tragic.
This isn’t your average horror film, because in spite of the crimes that May comes to commit, it’s hard to ever see her as a villain. It’s darkly comic at times, like when May becomes obsessed with Adam, especially enticed by his hands, and eventually winds up on a date with him. While watching his short film about cannibalism, she is genuinely turned on by the idea, leading her to bite Adam’s lips, much to his shock. It’s as sad as it is unexpectedly funny, because at the end of the day, May just wants someone to understand her despite her weirdness, yet her attempts to connect with other continuously backfire.
In his review of the film, Ebert wrote, “It goes for laughs and gets them, it functions as a black comedy, but then it glides past the comedy and slides slowly down into a portrait of madness and sadness”. This tonal mixture actually works incredibly well, with Bettis’ captivatingly strange performance a highlight.
“She plays a twisted character who might easily go over the top into parody, and makes her believable, sympathetic and terrifying,” Ebert said, calling her “peculiar but fully human”.
Ebert noted something that is true of all good horror movies, which is that a layer of sympathy for the villain really gets into the audience’s head. “It has to feel a fundamental sympathy for its monster, as movies as different as Frankenstein, Carrie and The Silence of the Lambs did. It has to see that they suffer, too,” he said.
That’s what May succeeds at, yet it remains a criminally underrated early 2000s slice of psychological horror that was sadly overshadowed by a much grislier trend in the genre at the time.
