The Bye Bye Man (2017)

Movie Info

He’s coming for you!

If you say it and even if you think it, the Bye Bye Man will come for you.  It is a warning that college student Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), his roommate John (Lucien Laviscount), and Kim (Jenna Kandell) learn when Elliot discovers strange writing in a drawer.  When Elliot, Sasha, John, and Kim begin having hallucinations, illness, and visions of horrible things, they learn that the Bye Bye Man might be real after all…and that he’s coming for them!

Directed by Stacy Title, The Bye Bye Man is a horror monster movie.  The film was shot in 2015 but not released until 2017 and based on the Robert Damon Schneck short story “The Bridge to Body Island” in the 2005 book The President’s Vampire:  Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America.  The film received negative reviews.

I’m afraid you’re going to need stitches.

I like horror movie monsters and the pictures from The Bye Bye Man reminded me of creatures like the Creeper and other movie boogeymen from recent years.  Yes, the Bye Bye Man is similar to other movie monsters, but the monster and the story never develop.

The movie feels like a hodgepodge of horror movie clichés.  It has the classic “Blood Mary” aspect with a character that you can’t say his name (amplified by not even being able to think it).  The effect of this is that it is like a virus like cursed tape in The Ring.  The Bye Bye Man creates visions and then you die or kill yourself or pass on the curse or all of the above?  It was so generic that it wasn’t even clear what the story was other than a means to kill people in a rather blasé way.

The movie almost feels like a student movie at points and this is included in the cast.  No one really stands out in the movie, and it is a shame that Carrie-Anne Moss and Faye Dunaway are suckered into pretty small roles in this movie (I hope they got paid a chunk for them).  It just continues the mediocrity.

I choose you, Pikachu!

Another general stand-out is Doug Jones who plays the Bye Bye Man.  Jones always gives a bit of a chill to a character but even he struggles here to make the Bye Bye Man something scary.  If the movie had been R-Rated and amped up the gore with the scares, it might have worked better, but the movie provides no jumps, scares, or unexpected moments…it is all predictable.

The Bye Bye Man didn’t really need to exist and it feels like it has existed in other forms over and over again.  Mediocre horror films are the worst in my opinion since they aren’t good but also don’t get to the level of “so-bad-it-is-good” which at least elevates a horror movie into a comedy.  The Bye Bye Man is just like eating a plain piece of toast…it just need something more.