Edward Lucky McKee was born and raised in the small riverbank town of Jenny Lind in Calaveras County, California. Growing up in poverty, he had limited access to modern forms of entertainment. However, at the age of ten, he used an old video camera to videotape his sister's birthday party, which sparked his interest in filmmaking. Two years later, he and a friend made their own version of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),which they saw at the local cinema.
McKee attended Calaveras High School, where he and a classmate, Kevin Ford, solicited a commission from the school board to create a documentary for their senior class. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles in 1993 and enrolled in a film writing program at the University of Southern California's School of Film-Television. During his four years at USC, he made several friends who helped him develop his directing skills.
After leaving USC in 1997, McKee returned to his hometown and searched for work. In 1999, he collaborated with his former USC classmate, Chris Sivertson, to make his first feature film, All Cheerleaders Die (2001),a low-budget horror film shot on high-definition videotape over two four-day weekends. The film was a splatter comedy about the rivalry between a group of high school jocks and four cheerleaders who are brought back to life to seek revenge.
While attending USC as a sophomore, McKee wrote the screenplay for a short film titled Fraction and the feature film May (2002),which was inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976),and the lyrics to a Nirvana song. May tells the story of a lonely and repressed young woman who is slowly pushed into insanity and murder by her quest for companionship.
May was developed through McKee's classmate Marius Vaysberg's production company, 2Loop Productions, and offered McKee a production deal. The film was shot in Los Angeles in late 2001 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002, where it was picked up by Lions Gate for a limited theatrical release. The film has since become a cult classic.
In 2005, McKee was offered by United Artists to direct The Woods (2006),a horror film shot in and around Montreal, Canada, starring Patricia Clarkson and Bruce Campbell. However, the film was shelved after United Artists was bought out by Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
McKee also directed an episode of the television series Masters of Horror (2005),titled "Sick Girl," which starred Angela Bettis and Erin Brown. The episode was a dark comedy-romantic version of The Fly (1986) featuring two young lovers whose romance is complicated by the arrival of a lethal insect.
In 2006, McKee stepped in front of the camera for his first acting role in the starring role of Roman, a psychological drama-thriller based on his own script and directed by Angela Bettis. He has also worked as a producer for Chris Sivertson on the feature film The Lost (2006),based on a novel by Jack Ketchum.
Most recently, McKee has agreed to direct Red (2008),an adaptation of a Jack Ketchum novel about a lonely war veteran who goes crazy after his pet dog is killed.
