Female-driven war stories with fantastical twists have the potential to be one of the most fascinatingly unique subgenres in cinema, but it’s never going to catch on if the movies themselves keep on vanishing without a trace. First there was Chloë Grace Moretz’s batsh*t Shadow in the Cloud, which was swiftly followed by writer and director Karen Cinorre’s Mayday.
They’d definitely make for one hell of a double feature, though, seeing as both stories focus on battle-hardened women dealing with all-out conflict dripping in mythological tropes and trappings, but neither managed to catch much fire with either critics or audiences. It’s a shame, but not entirely undeserved when there was so much rich potential that went infuriatingly untapped.
Mayday finds Grace Van Patten’s Ana unexplainably transported to a land where an army of female combatants are engaged in a never-ending war against men who repeatedly try to invade their safe haven. A spin on the old legend of sirens sending out a call to lure unwitting sailors to their doom, our hero isn’t quite sure she’s ready to be rampantly claiming lives having just arrived out of nowhere.
The film takes some big swings in terms of its visual and thematic components, but it never quite comes together to form a satisfying whole. Reviews were mixed across the board to put it lightly, but streaming always has a way of dragging even the most overlooked titles back up from the depths.
Per FlixPatrol, iTunes users have answered the distress call, with the entirely under-the-radar adventure having been given a second chance on the platform’s global most-watched list.
