Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.
It’s the week of February 7th, 2003. George W. Bush is in office and Jennifer Lopez is topping the charts as a major recording artist, with “All I Have” taking over the airwaves. Dance Dance Revolution has become a cultural phenomenon in the videogame industry thanks to its transition over to home console sales. And in theaters, Lucky McKee’s cult classic May is setting itself up for box office failure but eternal reverence in the horror community.
Lucky McKee had made a film straight out of college, nigh-impossible to find now, titled All Cheerleaders Must Die, a low budget supernatural horror comedy (later to be remade by McKee himself in 2013). And he dove straight into making May out of that project.
In a post-Columbine and post-9/11 America, horror movies veered into two very different directions. Some studios looked to lighten things up, play down the violence, and stray away from the prescient feelings that were already weighing heavy on the American people. On the other path, we were given a slew of films that addressed things headfirst, no matter how ugly. McKee uses May to douse us in those feelings and human interactions that make us so uncomfortable: loneliness, bullying, and ostracization.
May grows up bullied and rarely makes friends due to her lazy eye. Her mother makes her a doll that she becomes obsessed with; Suzie, who is a substitute for a best friend for decades. When May finally gets her vision corrected and starts to feel confident in herself, she begins branching out but does so awkwardly and by frequently misreading social cues. After a string of mishaps, all the while taking advice from the inanimate Suzie, May finally reaches a breaking point and lashes out in a deadly and violent manner.
May was and still is unlike any horror film to hit the scene. McKee wrote the movie, inspired by films like The Fisher King and Argento’s oeuvre, and what we are gifted with is a seriously relatable and uncomfortable drama that ramps up into a visceral and raw out-and-out horror movie. McKee shines a spotlight on the harsh truths that society often tries to shy away from, such as pet death and a school for disabled children, and forces the viewer to come face to face with these realities and recognize they are a natural part of life.
Against all odds, McKee crafts a film that is both distinctly rooted in the early 2000s while also feeling timeless. The music, the fashion, hell, even the actors who star in the movie scream early 2000s. Angry industrial and electronic alt-rock play behind off the shoulder tops and flannels over tees. Jeremy Sisto and Anna Farris both pop in for supporting roles, Sisto at the tail end of his nineties cute outcast roles and Farris having found new fame from her role in the Scary Movie franchise, while James Duval (Donnie Darko, SLC Punk) even shows up in an outstanding cameo.
But it’s Angela Bettis who plays our lead and she delivers an absolutely captivating performance. Coming in the wake of highly praised roles in Girl, Interrupted and Bless the Child, Bettis captures a feeling of loneliness that is evergreen. Her desperate attempts to not only just fit in but understand the rites and rituals on how to do so are something everyone struggles with at some point or another and it’s her ability to seem so innocent but on the brink of violence that will suck you in.
May would go on to be a financial disappointment for Lionsgate, pulling in a meager 6.3 thousand dollars against a budget upwards of 1.7 million. While receiving critical acclaim from tough-on-horror critics like Roger Ebert, it’s the lasting impact of May that makes it such a staple now. It’s gone on to become a cult classic, largely thanks to McKee’s effortless nail-biting pacing and an all-time great performance from Bettis, but also because of the film’s unnatural ability to distinctively be a horror movie but not fit perfectly into any one category. It’s got traces of supernatural horror, Frankenstein, slashers and psychological thrillers, and it culminates in perhaps one of the greatest climaxes of the entire decade.
I watched May for the first time for this article and I can tell you right now, it will become the first of dozens of viewings in the years to come.
source https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3638740/angela-bettis-won-horror-hearts-lucky-mckees-cult-classic-may-aughta-know/
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