Review: The Bye Bye Man

The Bye Bye Man stinks of career calculation, as if director Stacy Title and screenwriter Jonathan Penner watched as many mildly successful horror films in the last few year and constructed something they thought would make a profit. The Bye Bye Man also just stinks. The film is lifeless and boring while also not making any sense and never being even slightly scary.

Following a lively prologue that follows a horrible mass murder, the film focuses on a trio of way-too-old college students. The group is Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas) and his pal John (Lucien Laviscount). They move into a run-down house off-campus and soon things get weird. Elliot finds a nightstand with the manic scrawling of "Don't think it, don't say it" all over it. He also finds the name The Bye Bye Man written underneath the inside lining. Soon a psychic friend is broughten in and it becomes clear that an evil force is after them. This is embodied by Doug Jones in white face makeup and a cloak. He also has a CGI demon dog in tow.

Elliot and the others start having vivid hallucinations. Elliot thinks Sasha and John are fooling around behind his back for instance. This leads Elliot to investigate at the local library and of course he finds out that the Bye Bye man is summoned by know his name and speaking it once. The only way to stop the chain is to kill anyone who knows the name and yourself. 

As the film tried desperately to create suspense and fear, it increasingly gets sillier and dumber. There is a scene where someone is hit by a car going at least 60 mph and she is found seconds later still alive propped up against a tree. The mind races to understand how she got there and how she is still alive. Did the car really hit her in a way where she landed sitting against a tree or do the filmmakers really think audiences will look past it?

Bland characters, a bland villain and a lack of any scares make The Bye Bye Man the ultimate dud of a film. I kept wondering how Elliot would know so many great bands when he is clearly not into punk music at all. For my mind to wonder like this makes it apparent how bored I was watching the film. Even Carrie-Anne Moss and Faye Dunaway showing up in the final act don't help to make things any better. 

1/5