Another in a recent trend of low-budget, character-based chillers that have run the gamut from Willard to Dahmer, first-time writer/director McKee's May is a predictable movie about a disturbed young woman (Angela Bettis) whose obsessions with cutting, sewing, and the human body reach an inevitable convergence after she is spurned by a local hunk (Six Feet Under's Jeremy Sisto).
Though Bettis is appropriately spooky in the title role, a bored Sisto acts like he can't wait for the movie to be over, and the rest of the cast is your typical indie film assortment of minimally talented young actors whom you've never heard of. McKee proves to be neither a strong writer nor an effective director: his story is almost nonexistent, and he never really makes us understand why May is so screwed up. She has a lazy eye that – since it's apparently easy enough to correct with the contact lenses she puts in at the beginning of the film – hardly seems traumatic enough to have messed up her entire life. A brief flashback involving May's perfectionist mother carries no weight. So we can neither sympathize with May or fear her. She's just a weirdo.
Visually there is no suspense or atmosphere; we just get a collection of well-lit but poorly-executed shots. McKee doesn't even make use of a creepy score that could add some tension; instead, he unwisely aims for hipster cred by filling his soundtrack with inconsequential alt rock, including a couple of Breeders songs. The film gets a little gory at the end, but that's the only thing that could brand this a "horror" movie. Nothing to see here, folks. Move on.