The Bye Bye Man

The Bye Bye Man

Starring Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Cressida Bonas, Carrie-Anne Moss

Directed by Stacy Title

The Story:
College couple Elliot (Douglas Smith) and Sasha (Cressida Bonas) - plus Elliot's best friend John (Lucien Laviscount) - move into a creepy old house off campus and begin to experience strange occurrences.  Elliot discovers words scratched into the nightstand in his bedroom that says "don't say it, don't think it," and he lifts the cover and etched in the wood are the words "The Bye Bye Man."

As soon as he says his name, the Bye Bye Man (Doug Jones) arrives with his hell hound and begins tormenting the friends, putting images in their heads and causing them to turn on one another in the hopes of eventually killing them all.  Elliot has to find a way to stop the Bye Bye Man before he and his friends go...bye bye.

The Synopsis:
Born with albinism in the 1920s Louisiana, the Bye Bye Man was relentlessly teased and tormented by his peers, and as he got older, he began to seek revenge, becoming a serial killer.  He would travel by train and eventually his eyesight fails, then he takes the pieces of his victims and sews together Gloomsinger - his faithful dog-like creature.  His howl announces the arrival of his master, and the Bye Bye Man has to keep killing in order to restore his pet.  During some point, he develops telepathic abilities, and can arrive anywhere someone mentions or thinks his name.   

Sounds like an interesting story, something that could be truly terrifying if it was done right.  If.  It.  Was.  Done.  Right.  Unfortunately, this was just the synopsis of the much better short story written by Robert Damon Schneck in his book The President's Vampire in the short story "The Bridge to Body Island."  Writer Jonathan Penner (who is more famous for his three stints in the reality juggernaut "Survivor") decided to take this story and put it to screen with "The Bye Bye Man," but unfortunately he left a lot on the cutting room floor - most notably everything about the actual story.

In this bland, typical, paint-by-numbers horror yawn...I mean yarn...no, I was right the first time...we're introduced to three typical friends who are so typical they're typically boring.  Elliot is obviously the punk kid because he wears punk T-shirts and has a guitar with a punk band sticker on the side.  Sasha is the oblivious girlfriend who's just there to shore up the genders.  John is the jock who is obviously a jock because he has a football in his room and talks about playing baseball.  All three characters are extremely annoying, lackluster, and you don't really care about any of them in the least.  You actually root for the Bye Bye Man to send them to their makers.

As far as the story itself goes, it goes like this: Sasha's friend holds a seance in their new home and nothing happens, but then Elliot finds the words written in the nightstand so the Bye Bye Man is summoned, with his horribly-CGI'd dog (SyFy Originals can do better, which is very sad), and all three friends start getting images in their heads, illnesses, and the like.  Plus there's a possible love triangle between the friends that could either be real or all in Elliot's head, but either way no one cares.  As the scares and deaths escalate, Elliot visits the typical old woman who knows everything who tells him that her husband was once possessed by the Bye Bye Man and the only way to stop him is to kill everyone who knows his name.  But of course Elliot has a much better idea that makes total sense in his senseless brain.

So we continue on down the generic horror train, occasionally stopping to pick up the wary traveler who'd rather jump off the fast moving train than find where it leads.  At least that's how I felt watching this trainwreck.  There's a lot of train references here because there's a train in the movie that signifies something, where if you never read the short story you'd never know the significance because it was never mentioned in the movie.  In fact, nothing about the Bye Bye Man is mentioned - how he came to be, why he rode a train, what his dog was, nothing.  There's something to be said about a killer with no identity (Michael Myers in the first "Halloween" was truly terrifying because you never knew his motives), but only when the villain is so richly delivered that you don't notice.  The Bye Bye Man is as ridiculous as his name, an utterly forgettable foe going up against a group of morons with the combined IQ of a turnip.

At least there were some truly laugh-out-loud moments in this buddy comedy, such as when the girl ran in front of a moving train and got squashed like a paper sheet, or when another character is hit by a car in the most hilarious fashion.  You can just hear the Yakety Sax song in your head as these deaths occur.

The most unfortunate part of this film is some of the great actors they got - somehow - to play small roles.  Remember when Carrie-Ann Moss was the biggest thing in Hollywood?  Remember "The Matrix" series?  Whatever happened to her?  Well, here she's your typical gruff detective who's about as clueless as Dewey was in the "Scream" series.

What do you do after you win an Oscar for Best Actress for "Network," and get nominated two more times?  If you're Faye Dunaway you appear in "The Bye Bye Man" as the quintessential older crazy woman who knows everything that's happening.  What a dismay to see a once bright star fade into lame horror obscurity.  

That's what the Bye Bye Man really kills - people's careers.

The Summary:
If the Bye Bye Man is given strength through people thinking and saying his name, the world is a safe place because absolutely no one would ever think or say his name - because no one in their right mind would even see this trainwreck (once more train reference for the road).

The Score: D+