The Bye Bye Man (2017)
Directed by Stacy Title
When three college students move into an old house off campus, they unwittingly unleash a supernatural entity known as The Bye Bye Man, who comes to prey upon them once they discover his name. The friends must try to save each other, all the while keeping The Bye Bye Man's existence a secret to save others from the same deadly fate.
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Writer Jonathan Penner (Title's spouse) reaches further back into the horror canon to the 90s with a simple set-up that bears comparison to Bernard Rose's seminal Candyman , with characters doomed to hallucinate and enact violence if they dare to utter the titular character's name.
This PG-13 rated schlock masquerades as another of those urban legend staples borrowing heavily from the visualizations of Sinister (2012) and without the kind of subtext which still makes Candyman (1992) feel like a relevant attempt at contemplating the kind of power belief holds as far as personifying fear.
We’re spared the bullshit “based on true events” tagline here, because the character as written by Schneck was essentially Clive Barker’s Candyman.
After a prologue in 1969 where a guy ("Insidious" veteran Leigh Whannell) shoots up his culdesac, the movie jumps to today, where three cute college kids — Elliot ("Ouija's" Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas) and his best buddy John (Lucien Laviscount) — leave the dorms and rent a rickety old house.
Launching a new horror franchise is almost always a heavy lift, but several memorable properties have been successfully introduced over the past few years and so far show little sign of fading, including the Insidious , Purge and Conjuring/Annabelle series.
The glare of sunlight belies the horror we’re about to witness, as Larry (Leigh Whannell of “Saw” and “Insidious” fame) targets vintage-costumed victims with a shotgun, asking them who they told.
At first, we think he’s going to be the sort of shock-cut figment who pops up in the bathroom mirror, like Candyman or one of the ghosts from “Insidious.”
Larry (Leigh Whannell, "Saw," "Insidious"), who mutters 'Don't think it, don't say it' over and over, has covered his living room with the warning.
There’s also a bizarre, fitfully amusing prologue (which later morphs into an impromptu flashback) featuring Leigh Whannell, the Saw and Insidious scribe having what appears to be a grand time hamming it up as a journalist who should have left a story involving a perplexing 1969 murder spree well enough alone.
Co-star Jenna Kanell perfectly channels Neve Campbell from “The Craft” as she channels energy in the spiritually compromised house.
There is no escape, though some have tried by writing “don’t’ think it/don’t say it” with “The Shining”-like obsessiveness on walls.
You can trace the premise right back to “The Shining” — to that scene where Jack Torrance, standing in the bathroom with the caretaker, enters his new reality of murder.
Cinematographer James Kniest’s fluid Steadicam and forced perspective shots casually nod to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining without being unnecessarily derivative.
But in this movie’s case, all roads seem to lead specifically to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining , a masterpiece whose terror is modeled so closely on familiar patterns of domestic abuse that even without its supernatural kink it might still be a pretty scary movie, just for different reasons.
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Unlike the excellent It Follows, this thriller borrows from Sinister to perpetuate its languishing myth until it goes into In the Mouth of Madness mode.
Director Stacy Title and writer Jonathan Penner probably didn’t set out to make a movie this godawful, but it seems that their crude amalgam of Sinister, It Follows, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Babadook revolted against them in production and escaped into theaters as a vulgar, misshapen mess of unintended comedy and melodrama.
This PG-13 rated schlock masquerades as another of those urban legend staples borrowing heavily from the visualizations of Sinister (2012) and without the kind of subtext which still makes Candyman (1992) feel like a relevant attempt at contemplating the kind of power belief holds as far as personifying fear.
If you’ve seen Sinister , Candyman or Oculus , you’ve seen The Bye Bye Man .
It’s like Title and Penner looked at It Follows and The Babadook and said “I’ll do that,” except he had no clue how to actually do that .
If someone got drunk, read the Wikipedia entry for “It Follows” and decided over the next morning’s hangover to write a screenplay, “The Bye Bye Man” might be the result.
Director Stacy Title and writer Jonathan Penner probably didn’t set out to make a movie this godawful, but it seems that their crude amalgam of Sinister, It Follows, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Babadook revolted against them in production and escaped into theaters as a vulgar, misshapen mess of unintended comedy and melodrama.
But there isn't anything like atmosphere, let alone subtext (like the way "It Follows" evoked sexual disease, or "The Monster" played on bad parenting).
The Bye Bye Man is like someone watched a double-bill of The Babadook/It Follows and said "I can do that!"
Unlike the excellent It Follows, this thriller borrows from Sinister to perpetuate its languishing myth until it goes into In the Mouth of Madness mode.
The film has a sort of late 90s feel, if mostly for the rampant YA craze inspired by Wes Craven’s Scream films and I Know What You Did Last Summer .
An opening sequence set in 1969 Wisconsin depicts crazed local journalist Larry Redmon ( Saw writer-director Leigh Whannell) embarking on a shotgun shooting rampage, murdering eight neighbors before killing himself.
The glare of sunlight belies the horror we’re about to witness, as Larry (Leigh Whannell of “Saw” and “Insidious” fame) targets vintage-costumed victims with a shotgun, asking them who they told.
As refashioned by Penner, the picture opens decades in the past, when a reporter named Redmon (Leigh Whannell, one of the original “Saw” creators) goes on a killing spree ending in suicide, muttering the movie’s advertising tagline, “Don’t think it.
Larry (Leigh Whannell, "Saw," "Insidious"), who mutters 'Don't think it, don't say it' over and over, has covered his living room with the warning.
There’s also a bizarre, fitfully amusing prologue (which later morphs into an impromptu flashback) featuring Leigh Whannell, the Saw and Insidious scribe having what appears to be a grand time hamming it up as a journalist who should have left a story involving a perplexing 1969 murder spree well enough alone.
Less cohesive elements would be the earnest appearance of Carrie Anne Moss as a thoroughly intuitive detective, or an outright terrible performance from Leigh Whannell (the scribe of contemporary genre films directed by James Wan, like the Saw and Insidious franchises), although these extremes are a lot more interesting than the tepid sexual tensions playing out between the three leads, all of whom give serviceable performances in rather subpar characterizations.
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Adapted from Damon Schneck's 'The Bridge to Body Island' by Jonathan Penner, "The Bye Bye Man" is like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" for the waking crossed with the Bloody Mary urban legend and "It Follows'" contagion concept.
Director Stacy Title and writer Jonathan Penner probably didn’t set out to make a movie this godawful, but it seems that their crude amalgam of Sinister, It Follows, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Babadook revolted against them in production and escaped into theaters as a vulgar, misshapen mess of unintended comedy and melodrama.
Say “Hello!” to the latest attempt by Hollywood to craft a new horror icon in the vein of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, or even the concept of “Death” from the underrated Final Destination series, which is arguably the franchise The Bye Bye Man most closely resembles.
It goes for the logic of momentary jolts, and for a tone of macabre youth-schlock sensation, like “The Conjuring” crossed with a “Final Destination” sequel.
The scary stuff -- borrowed heavily from Candyman , The Ring , Final Destination , and others -- is just as pathetic, despite Doug Jones portraying the title monster.
Stacy Title's latest directorial effort is a throwback to early 00s American teen horror such as Jeepers Creepers and Final Destination .