“Don’t think it. Don’t say it”.
Three college friends move into a new house together expecting happiness and many memories to come, but what they have waiting for them is much worse than they expected. “The Bye Bye Man” takes place in Wisconsin when three college students –Elliot (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and his best friend John (Lucien Laviscount) – decide to get an off-campus house for the three of them.
The friends soon discover the horrific backstory behind the house and the monster that lives within it – The Bye Bye Man. Knowing the name makes you vulnerable and closer to him, especially when you hear a wolf howl and a train coming your way. Saying the name even once causes self madness in a person to the point where they kill anyone else who knows the name as well as themselves. “The Bye Bye Man” was originally rated R, but it was later edited to be PG-13. The movie was overall mediocre.
The introduction to the myth, an the lore behind it, was actually very captivating. “The Bye Bye Man” was set up perfectly for the audience to begin to get attached to their seat. Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. It simply became boring and, quite frankly, tedious to watch.
The redundancy of this movie turned this four star plot into utter chaos. One by one characters would all die the same way; they would all go insane the same way — it was just predictable. At one point, you start to wonder why you even came. The ending mimicked the beginning, and instead of getting the intended full-circle affect, the previous repetitiveness made the ending tiring and cliche.
It’s not all that different from the other movies of the genre, and that’s where “The Bye Bye Man” messes up; moreover, the audience wanted something new, not something predictable. It became all too reminiscent of an average horror movie. When you pay ten dollars for a ticket and about a thousand dollars for snacks, you expect more out of your experience. The film just didn’t live up to everything it promised.
The movie hardly scared the audience, actually leaving some viewers laughing at the way the characters would constantly say “The Bye Bye Man.” The title itself isn’t one to be taken seriously. I would give this movie 3 stars out of 5 for the beginning and climax.
