May

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

May is a 2002 horror movie about a lonely young woman (played by Angela Bettis) and her efforts to develop some sort of meaningful connection with another human being. This is somewhat complicated by how shy, socially awkward, and just plain weird she is. As each attempt fails, the already unstable May starts going further and further down the rabbit hole...


Tropes used in May include:


  • Abusive Parents: While she isn't shown very often, May's mother comes across as more than a little condescending and emotionally abusive.
  • Adorkable: You just want to cuddle her and tell her how to interact in a socially acceptable manner...
  • Alpha Bitch: Ambrosia.
  • Asshole Victim: Arguably Ambrosia.
  • Ax Crazy: May becomes this towards the end.
  • Beware the Quiet Ones: Indeed.
  • Black Comedy: There's a good amount of this in the movie. A good example would be when May, having kept Lupe, Polly's dead cat for several days, decides to spray the body with air freshener to stop it smelling.
  • Blood Is the New Black: May returns to her apartment absolutely covered in the blood of herself and the class of blind children after they accidentally break Susie's case and cut themselves on the broken glass.
  • Break the Cutie: And how.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The surgical tools in the animal hospital, and the ashtray that Petey makes for May.
  • Chekhov's Skill: May's sewing skills.
  • Companion Cube: A darker example - May starts out (apparently, we don't know for sure) just pretending Susie is real, but then she starts to actually believe it. Oh, and of course there's Amy.
    • Then there's the corpse of Lupe. May hugs her, strokes her, and talks to her, until she decides to keep her in the freezer.
  • Creepy Doll: Susie, a little bit. Most notably when you can hear her whispering, or the glass on her case cracking - not that these are real, this is all in May's head. She certainly looks very creepy, too. Also Amy, the life-size doll made out of body parts.
  • Creepy Monotone: "I need more parts."
  • Cute and Psycho: May.
  • A Darker Me
  • Depraved Bisexual
  • The Dog Bites Back
  • The Doll Episode
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: May appears this way in most of the movie posters, such as this one.
  • Emotionless Girl: May, once she's decided to make Amy. Although when Amy doesn't come to life, she becomes very upset again.
  • Eye Scream: May gouges out her own eye with a pair of scissors in order to finish Amy.
    • And prior to that, she starts clawing at her eyes after having worn the same set of contacts for several days, a horror that most contact lens users have run into before.
  • Fetish: May appears to have one for blood (especially after viewing Adam's film), and Polly promptly develops a fetish for cutting after May cuts her thumb with a scalpel, requesting that she do it again.
  • For Halloween I Am Going as Myself: Sort of. May is able to get away with having blood stains all over her forearms and lugging a large, heavy and normally suspicious-looking wheelie case around in public, as she commits her murders and transports the bodies during Halloween.
  • Foreshadowing: Lots. There's May's focus on certain body parts for each person (Adam's hands, Polly's neck, etc.) and her homemade clothes, many of which are sewn together out of old outfits. There's her comment to Susie about how Susie has always "seen [her]", her job at the animal hospital, her complete lack of any disturbance at anything violent or gory and thinking that Adam's movie was "sweet", and of course, her mother's comment that "If you can't find a friend, make one."
    • With the biggest example being the scene with May gouging out her lazy eye being played at the very beginning.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: Amy.
  • Freak-Out: May has a huge one after Lupe's body is discovered in her freezer. She snaps and murders Blank, the guy who made the discovery. Following the murder, she suddenly gets the idea to make her own friend...
  • Genre Busting: It's a weird, creepy, depressing romantic dramedy-ish... thing... that ends up becoming a slasher/Frankenstein movie for the last twenty minutes or so.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Angela Bettis, who plays May, also played the title character in the 2002 remake of Carrie. Prior to that, she appeared in the film adaptation of Girl, Interrupted as Janet Webber. It also has Anna Faris in a rare semi-serious role.
  • How We Got Here: The very start of the film shows May screaming in agony and holding her bloodied hand over her lazy eye.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Adam's film is a black and white short about a couple who go for a picnic and then start to devour each other. May becomes turned on by it.
  • Insane Equals Violent
  • Kids Are Cruel: As a child, May was ostracised by her classmates on her first day at school - simply because she wore an eyepatch.
  • Le Film Artistique: Jack and Jill, the film Adam made which he shows May.
  • Lipstick Lesbian: Polly.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Adam, which makes their breakup all the more... dangerous.
  • Loners Are Freaks
  • Lonely Doll Girl: That'd be May. Later she becomes a Living Doll Collector.
  • Love Imbues Life: The horrifying conclusion.
  • A Love to Dismember
  • Madness Makeover: Interesting example. Contrary to the usual pattern of becoming more sloppy and disheveled as one goes crazy, dowdy May becomes much more stylish and sexy as she plunges into homicidal insanity.
  • Marionette Motion: A brief example occurs when Amy comes to life.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The ending. Has Amy really come to life, or is May hallucinating that she has (either due to the pain of gouging her eye out, her already unstable state of mind, or both)?
  • Meganekko
  • Mood Whiplash: As noted above, the film starts out as a quirky romantic dramedy. However, the moment May kills Lupe, the entire film quickly descends into horror.
  • No Social Skills: May has a severe lack of social skills due to living in isolation for most of her life.
  • Playing Against Type: Anna Faris in a non-comedic horror role.
  • Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: May, after Adam dumps her.
  • Really Gets Around: Polly has shades of this.
  • Sanity Slippage: May, slowly and steadily, right up until she kills Lupe (it is debatable as to whether she actually meant to kill her or not) and keeps the body.
  • Self-Harm: At one point May cuts into the tip of her thumb with a scalpel, apparently as a form of relaxation. She then tries it on Polly, who unexpectedly finds that she likes it.
  • Serial Killer: By the end of the film, May has killed five people and one cat.
  • She's Got Legs: Ambrosia again. May certainly thinks so, too, and uses them as parts for Amy.
  • Shrinking Violet: May's only comfortable social interactions are with Susie, and she's so shy that she can barely talk in the presence of other people at all, even when they're clearly interested in getting to know her. However, once she resorts to murder, she becomes much more confident.
  • Significant Anagram: When deciding on a name for her creation, May rearranges the letters spelling out her own name from the broken ashtray to form "Amy".
  • Slashed Throat: Poor Polly.
  • Stalker with a Crush: May towards Adam.
  • Strange Girl: May. Oh so much.
  • Stripperific: Ambrosia.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer and synopsis on the back of the DVD (although it's slightly more vague than the trailer) completely spoil the fact that May decides to quite literally make her own friend.
  • Twist Ending: ... and also unexpected.
  • Villain Protagonist: May becomes one of these.
  • Woman Scorned: One of the driving forces behind May's descent into insanity.
  • X Meets Y: Five Hundred Days of Summer meets Carrie meets Frankenstein.