The Bye Bye Man

* spoilers *

If you know about the Bye Bye Man, your thoughts and fears power him. Elliot discovers him just as he moves in with his best friend and his girlfriend. I had so many problems with this movie. First, the Bye Bye Man is a terrible name and he's essentially a way worse rip off of Freddy Krueger. Second, the mythology of the character is never established. Sights and sounds of trains, coins, and his very badly CGIed and badly designed dog are his harbingers, but we never know why. The dog seems to only eat the victims eyes when he's massive and doesn't really make sense. We only know that not thinking of or saying his name should defeat him which never works. Third, his whole modus operandi is really off. He seems to force people to kill other people who have heard of him, but this is totally counterintuitive. Why not have them kill random people and then keep the amount of people who are susceptible to your mind games alive to spread the word and kill more people. Killing people who know of you just serves to keep your name in obscurity. Even the portrayal of the Bye Bye Man is awful. He comes into physical contact with a character and doesn't or isn't able to hurt them, Very weird and I do not fault Doug Jones who is always very creepy and awesome. The look is also pedestrian with a slightly stylized hoodie, normal clothing, and a weird looking face.

The characters are not much better than the figure they are running from. Elliot becomes obsessed with thinking his best friend John is sleeping with his girlfriend Sasha. Why get drawn into that drama when people are dying? Sasha gets a bit of a cold and coughs pathetically through the movie as if it's a debilitating, supernatural disease. John sees a few hallucinations that turn him into a chauvinist. He sleeps with one of Sasha's friends and he can't perform. Then he hallucinates maggots on her and calls her names even though they disappear. I simply don't care about their stupid drama about fidelity and miscommunication. This isn't a romantic comedy. These dull characters go nowhere throughout the film. It feels like almost nothing really happens. They go seeking information and don't get very far. They figure out that if they don't fear him, the Bye Bye Man's power diminishes (much like Freddy Krueger), but it wasn't enough. These characters are shockingly useless and didn't hold my interest. The only good things about Elliot are his cool band shirts and him singing along tearfully to Bye Bye Love, which is ironically accurate to his situation. Overall, The Bye Bye Man has some fun individual scenes, but most of the movie drags on aimlessly. Too much teen drama; not enough plot. I would recommend seeing something else.

My rating: 1/5 fishmuffins