Film Review — Mayday (2021)
★★☆☆☆
Transported to a strange new world, Ana joins a ragtag group of women fighting in a never-ending war.
With a sprinkling of Alice in Wonderland, a smattering of Peter Pan, and a dollop of third-wave feminism, Karen Cinorre’s high-reaching feature debut is a visual marvel crippled by a problematic approach and sunk by a shallow script.
It’s a real shame as there’s a lot of good here. Cinorre shows promise as a director, crafting memorable visuals that do a lot of the heavy lifting in conveying the ideas the screenplay often struggles with. The atmosphere is dynamic, and the action is ably captured. There’s even a dance number that, while jarring at first, is a fun addition that helps reinforce the lunacy. Colin Stetson (Hereditary, Colour Out of Space) also pops by with another excellent ambient score, the kind he could probably create in his sleep at this point.
Mia Goth continues to rule as the undisputed arthouse horror queen, turning in another unhinged performance that shifts nicely as our perception of the character does. Of note, too, is Grace Van Patten, who holds her own against her esteemed co-stars with a growing confidence. Juliette Lewis also shows up for about thirty seconds — the film glowing in her all too brief presence.
In the same way the film played with the NATO phonetic alphabet, changing the ‘M’ from Mike to Mary, I’m changing the ‘Y’ to something else: Yikes. Mayday is far too simplistic with its depiction of female struggle. Its anger reads like something concocted by a blue-haired Starbucks barista, smashing the patriarchy by half-assedly making frappuccino and writing long Twitter threads about how hard life in Los Angeles is.
Worse still is the film’s apparent message that all women, save a lone messianic figure, are pathologically incapable of any kind of strength in the real world. How utterly depressing.
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