The Bye Bye Man

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The Bye Bye Man is about three college students you couldn’t care less about that stumble upon a local legend when they stupidly unleash a town boogeyman. Now, I like the very beginning of the movie (set in the 1960s). It’s actually kind of chilling and disturbing. Things start to go downhill for this movie when you meet the people who are actually supposed to be the main characters. For starters, these three can’t act to save their lives (which is funny because I’ve seen the two guys act better in other stuff). Secondly, they are so thinly developed, I don’t know if I can actually call them characters. Why is the villain called “the bye bye man?” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think the name is all that scary (or fitting of a villain that’s supposed to be scary). Interestingly enough, the character of the bye bye man does have his creepy moments, largely due to the performance of Doug Jones. The other performance I feel offers a glimmer of hope is Carrie-Ann Moss as the detective investigating the events of the movie. The sad thing is: her story (and character) is the most interesting thing in the movie. She shows up about an hour into this hour-and-a-half movie. This movie is very exposition heavy. I feel like we’re all being told what the “characters” are feeling, thinking, and saying. However, I will admit that there are some genuinely creepy moments sprinkled here and there. The problem is: why should I care enough to be freaked out if I don’t care about the characters? The slow pace doesn’t work nearly effectively as it should. I understand wanting to build a sense of dread. Because I don’t have investment in what’s on screen, I can’t feel the sense of dread the movie wants to build. To be fair, I expected The Bye Bye Man to be a complete waste of time. It wasn’t. There were some decent things in it. There were a lot of bad things, too. Overall, the most frustrating thing about this movie is that I actually saw glimpses of a much better movie trying to escape the one I just watched. The filmmakers just needed to focus one of the vastly more interesting subplots (and better acted characters) than the one that we actually got.

5 / 10