I truly & hugely enjoyed May (2002) & place it with Ginger Snaps (2000) & American Psycho 2: All American Girl (2002) as exceptional "horror films for girls."

May Dove Canaby (Angela Bettis, who the same year played Carrie White in the made-for-tv remake of Carrie) is a lonesome, vulnerable, attractive, & endearing goth chick who can't seem to make any friends.

Her only companion is a revolting little doll she's had since childhood, though her overbearing mother never allowed her to take the doll out of its glass display case to actually play with it. So she's never actually been that close even to a toy.

It's not that nobody's ever been attracted to May; she looks just like Angela Bettis for crine out loud. The neighborhood hunk (Jeremy Sisto) & the neighborhood dyke (Anna Faris) provide May with opportunities she sabatoges due to her own social ineptitude & looniness.

Things do begin to improve for May when she decides literally to make a friend -- sewn together from carefully selected parts of sundry victims, acting on her theory that people have "many pretty parts but no pretty wholes."

Whether judged as a very strange independent thriller, as a totally pokerfaced black comedy, as a slasher or a character study, May is just a very winning tale on many levels. Right to the film's last half-minute, it sustains a layered tone of sadness, humor, & a terribly disturbing empathy for the young madwoman.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl