Mother May Eye: May and the Societal Pressure to be Perfect

Lucky McKee’s May is a psychological horror and erotic thriller film that communicates to its audience the horrific effects of parental pressure, bullying, and unfaithfulness. The film stars a generic societal pariah who is later pushed past beyond her boiling point and thusly commits heinous crimes.

The movie begins with a young May (Angela Bettis), a girl whose lazy eye has caused her to be the butt of jokes amongst her peers, receiving a glass-encased doll named Suzie on her birthday. May’s life, after many years, then belatedly takes a turn for the better—her lazy eye is gradually treated, she unwittingly attracts two attractive individuals, and along with her job as a vet, she goes on to volunteer at a school for blind children. Still, May remained to be the oddball she always was, making her relationships with Adam (Jeremy Sisto) and Polly (Anna Faris) precarious at best. This expectedly ends with May feeling betrayed and forgotten, snapping her into a downward spiral from her tolerable life to that of homicide and insanity.

McKee sews together the volatility of a mentally ill, borderline psychotic female lead, and the cold detachment brought upon by a sinister, disreputable doll in the sick embroidery that is his May. In fact, McKee’s film is so profusely riddled with a great deal of different horror genre elements that it can be described as, much like the film’s Amy, an abomination composed of filmic homografts. The film per se is exceedingly macabre, gifting its audience first with a peep inside the halls of May’s unsound mind, then the happenings that pushed the titular protagonist into homicidal delirium, then snippets of bloody human-snipping, and finally, an ending that can only be effectively strewn together by the film’s most invested theorists.

Personally, I saw May as an hour-long forewarning for anyone who has ever forcefully attempted to shape another person in his or her own likeness, overly inhibited a person with various unnecessary rules, maligned or maltreated others, or betrayed their significant other either through backbiting or infidelity. In all actuality, May and her mindset are results of all of these, brought upon by the different sectors of a callous society mainly within the false “comfort” of her own home, in school amongst judgmental peers, and in even in her workplace. Truly, May’s life, despite the small uphill victories, was still rife with people who sought to bring an awkward, antisocial individual like her down. That being said, May also revolves around the notion of a superficial ‘perfection’ that is defined by and only by society, as true perfection is non-existent except within the realms of the divine.

A testament to the theme of societal ‘perfection’ is the overabundance of scenes and dialogue pertaining dolls and parts. From the get-go, May is thrown into a world that cares only about external beauty—her mother and father fuss about her lazy eye and appear to even be disgusted by how their own daughter looks. When May was being teased because of it, her mother gives her neither encouragement nor comfort, instead leaving her with a doll she was not even allowed to play with. Though she did not deserve her difficult childhood, the way May was weaned by her parents justified the titular character’s superficial personality—May saw only the external, objectifying whole beings into mere parts, and dismissing what made people human. May even goes so far as to be turned off by the person as a whole if ever she sees one little imperfection. As the disturbed anti-heroine, May exemplifies and even embraces the chains that bind her—murdering ex-lovers and friends alike and harvesting from them what she regarded as ‘beautiful.’ On Halloween Night, May’s garbs resembled the only thing that ever came close to May’s definition of perfection—Suzie.

In fact, the Suzie doll was a wildcard in the entire movie. Unlike the possessed Chucky, Annabelle, or Brahms, Suzie played a more symbolic role. Suzie was the representation of May’s view on humanity and her own sanity. As in the movie, external beauty must only be admired from afar and never touched without consent. May, at first, admired the hands, neck, legs, and other body parts of other characters from afar when Suzie’s case was whole. When it began to crack, May began slowly caressing the bodies of others, even reaching out to Ambrosia’s (Nichole Hiltz) legs when they crisscrossed before May’s very eyes. When Suzie’s case shattered in the school for the blind, so too did May’s inhibitions and moral boundaries—she started to kill and amputate those who used to be her friends and lovers, making it evident she only saw them as parts. It is interesting to note, however, that while she fashioned Amy out of the body parts she saw as beautiful, she gauged her lazy eye, the “imperfect” eye, for Amy. It could be theorized that May either always saw herself as perfect, or that she has abandoned her superficial outlook on life and has decided to share her imperfection with her friend. Whatever the reason, May is quote literally “turning the blind eye” from a society that does naught but pull her down. Subsequently, the abomination Amy, inspired by Frankenstein’s monster itself, was endowed with life.

I personally believe that Amy lived due to a combination of her strong emotions and sense of desperation, and a mysterious albeit silent spirit that dwelt within Suzie all this time. Much like Madeline, whose pleas for her baby to live was answered by ethereal forces only to make Grace into a bloodsucking demon child, May’s pleas were also heard by otherworldly dark forces, ironically giving her a friend in the form of an abomination of allotransplants and flesh that cradled the blinded May as she bled profusely on the couch. Though the notion of acceptance and illusion is not in any way daft, I personally refuse to accept it as so, mainly and only due to the fact that it would be as classless as saying that the whole Inception took place in the dreamscape.

May truly is an intriguing film. Though only horror in its last moments, May gives its viewers a fear-induced respect and love for the mentally ill. McKee’s film also acts as a deterrent for any bully or egocentric individual, as there have been many, true-to-life cases of the bullied snapping and killing those who have wronged them. Bettis’ performance of a socially awkward girl and her transformation into a deranged killer and harvester of body parts is riveting, and it the white-hot and black-cold duality of employing the horrors of insanity as brought about by a living girl and the horrors of silence as brought about by a lifeless doll is chilling, which is all the more effective in a film that is as rustic as May.

I give the movie a 3/5.