Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mayday’ on Hulu, a Visually Rich, But Overstated Magical-Realist Feminist Fable

Now on Hulu, Mayday is a magical-realist indie drama and, please, don’t tune me out yet. I know. Some of us are weary of the Southern Wilds and 90 percent realistic fairy tales, but this one is a visually and thematically ambitious outing from first-time director Karen Cinorre, who lines up a talented young cast – led by Grace Van Patten of Nine Perfect Strangers fame – for some metaphors within an allegory, you know, stuff like that. That’s enough potential to maybe make the film worth 100 minutes of your life.

MAYDAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ana (Van Patten) lives in her car and works as a server in a hotel banquet facility. It’s an awful gig with an awful manager, an abusive cretin who corners her in a walk-in and – well, we don’t see what happens, but we can imagine, and that’s just as horrifying. She emerges, utterly scathed, and follows a call we’ve heard via voiceover many times since the movie started – “Mary Alpha Delta Yankee Alpha Delta,” it goes – headfirst into an oven, the pilot flame burning.

She awakens on a rocky shoreline. Nearby is a rusty, beached U-boat, the headquarters of three women waging war against any male soldiers who dare enter their sphere. Marsha (Mia Goth) is an angry loose nut, and we recognize her from the opening scenes as the terrified, abused bride celebrating her marriage at Ana’s place of work. Bea (Havana Rose Liu) is a steely sweetheart, and Gert (Soko) is the tough one. They’re outfitted like WWII soldiers in skirts, and the tech reflects the same era. They use soft voices over shortwave radios to lure men in boats or planes into a nearby storm to die. Or, as the three veterans train Ana to do, they line up men in their rifle sights and put them down. They go through the procedure – lie still, slow your breathing, squeeze the trigger. “When my heart stops, that’s when I shoot?” Ana asks. Yes. Exactly.

Such is their existence, bonding over the deaths of their male opposition during a seemingly endless war. There are many unanswered questions about this reality, which exists on the fringes of logic like a dream. Why do the stars swarm through the sky, like fireflies? It seems as if men are waging war against each other and women are third-party combatants conducting a wholly different battle of misandry; via the radio, we hear other female outposts committing the same acts, and cheering each other on. And it may be a place beyond death, which Ana specifically addresses. The reply? “Girls are better off dead, because now we’re free.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The film has the imprecise, illusory feel of Benh Zeitlin’s films Beasts of the Southern Wild and Wendy, with the fodder of feminist revenge movies like Promising Young Woman, The Nightingale or Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge.

Performance Worth Watching: The film’s broad gestures tend to limit the cast’s potential, but Van Patten shows Shailene Woodley-esque empathy in her performance, and Goth finds some elemental truth in the horror of her character’s psychological damage.

Memorable Dialogue: Marsha and Ana have a heated exchange:

Marsha: I made you into a hero!

Ana: You made me into a psychopath.

Marsha: It’s the same thing!

Sex and Skin: Implied sexual assault.

Our Take: “You’ve been in a war your whole life, you just didn’t know it,” Marsha tells Ana. “You can’t swim against the currents,” she says. And then, to a man they charm in order to get close and kill him, “You don’t need your instruments anymore.” My point: Mayday is far from subtle, its dialogue thinly veiled, Cinorre all but clobbering the audience with her intent. And it’s only vaguely satisfying, watching four women – with the substance of maybe two characters thinly stretched among them – acting as the mythological Greek sirens, taking their pound of flesh from the patriarchy in a not-at-all symbolic manner.

At least it’s not muddled, I guess. Although the film lacks the depth of theme and character it needs to fully and symbolically chart the 21st-century corrective course of gender equality, Cinorre’s passion shows through. She has an eye for young talent; its four principals are fiery, each going beyond the screenplay’s limitations to find an emotional foothold or two, keeping us engaged. (Although the director giving the ever-loving Juliette Lewis not nearly enough to do, relegating her to a bit part, seems downright criminal.) Sam Levy’s cinematography is gorgeous, lively and evocative. And a surprising third-act musical sequence is amusing, if somewhat out of place in a film aiming to spot-weld gloomy tones – it addresses suicide, and is remorseless in its depiction of violence, the female gaze turned murderous – with ethereal fantasy. It’s not quite cathartic, the ending falters and its parts never quite come together, but it’s easy to admire the effort.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The best elements of Mayday ultimately outweigh its faults.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

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