The first horror movie of the year and I had no idea what to expect. I was hoping that The Bye Bye Man would be decent, but with a title only a mother could love, my feelings towards this movie were rather bleak. Low and behold, I could have definitely judged this book by its cover and by, er, name.
A trio of college friends decide to live off-campus in an old desolate house for some reason. Spooky and strange things begin to happen when they find out about the previous residents of that house. Their lives are at stake as they try and unravel the mystery of the Bye Bye Man.
Ugh, where to start with this thing? The core concept of The Bye Bye Man is neat and interesting. It’s not entirely original– the idea kind of resembles that of Bloody Mary with the whole name shtick they got going, but it has its moments. The name game and hallucinations they end up getting are rather cool: Whoever knows or says its name pretty much has to die to end the cycle– but it gets confusing towards the later part of the movie, which boils down to the execution. You can almost pass off any shitty story as long as the execution is solid. Unfortunately for this movie, we get both– a shitty story and poor execution, which doesn’t bode well for the overall quality of this horror product.
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The acting was awful. Let’s start there. I’m not sure if they were going for straight to home video standards or they just can’t act. For two thirds of the movie our actors were flat out trash. Luckily when the pace and action started to pick up, the actors managed to muster up some not so terrible performances. The actors themselves seem to have no chemistry with each other. Also, the sexual tension they were attempting to build was also awkward and just flat out laughable.
As for the Bye Bye Man himself, it could’ve gone better. I dug the face makeup, that was actually creepy and one of the highlights of this disaster. Where they completely lost me was the entire look of the villain. Like I said, his face was dope and eerily creepy. The rest of him not so much. The dude was dressed like Dexter– thermal looking top and dark pants and boots. That legit threw me for a loop. I was kind of fucking flabbergasted at the fact that they would do face makeup but then dress him like a fucking cat burglar??? Really??? What a half-assed execution of a monster. The CGI hound of hell that ran with the monster was also very suspect and just weird looking.
While we’re on that subject, the CGI in this thing was awful. They definitely could’ve and should’ve spent that budget on some practical effects. The blood and gore in this flick also don’t add up. You get some pretty brutal scenes with shotgun killings, but no use of blood or even fake bullet holes in sight. I get this is PG-13, but damn I’ve seen crazy stuff done at this rating– they just didn’t try or care. We do end up getting a little blood and gore practical effects being used towards the very end, but too little too late.
This movie sucked. The story was terrible, the horror aspects were amateur and to top it off the acting was just trash. The only good thing they had going was the face of their villain, and they even managed to ruin that. Don’t bother with this one folks, go watch Ouija 2 again or something. //Arturo Padilla
