In the weeks before The Bye Bye Man was released, some genius made a poster, mocking the movie’s original poster and called it The Peepee Poopoo Man. I wish this movie had been that one instead.
The Bye Bye Man is about some college kids who move into a house off campus together because… I honestly can’t remember why. They move into this old, dilapidated house as a couple and a third wheel. Elliot (Douglas Smith) constantly looks as though he’s just come off of an 18 hour Call of Duty tournament. His girlfriend, Sasha (Cressida Bonas), who has clearly been recently lobotomized, says yes to the house and they settle in. Oh, and their friend, John (Lucien Laviscount) is there, too.
They decide to have a housewarming party, I guess, and during the festivities, Elliot’s young niece toddles off upstairs. In Elliot and Sasha’s bedroom, she finds a coin that’s just seemingly dropped out of thin air below their nightstand. She puts it back, cause she was raised well, and is then discovered by Elliot and sent back to the downstairs where all of the responsible, drunk adults are.
That’s when it happens. Elliot discovers the scribblings of a madman in the nightstand. Don’t think it don’t say it. Don’t think it don’t say it. So what does he do? HE SAYS IT. Dunce.
Anyway, one of Sasha’s friends, Kim (Jenna Kanell) is some kind of half-assed clairvoyant so she holds a séance after everyone else leaves. She gets freaked out half way through and scares everybody else because she knew that Elliot hid his keys in the frying pan.
Going forward, the house goes a bit Amityville when the housemates’ minds start playing tricks on them. They’re seeing things that aren’t there, John comes on to Sasha who just stands there like, “as if!”, Sasha gets sick and has the fakest cough I have ever heard… it’s a real nightmare.
This movie is what I like to call a drinking game movie. You don’t seriously watch it. You wait for it to come to Netflix and you invite your friends over and drink every time someone does something dumb. The “Special FX” are very special indeed. Including some sort of hell-hound that looks like it walked right out of an earlier version of Zelda.
I think naming it The Bye Bye Man was their first mistake. One more “Bye” in there and this could have been about N*SYNC’s revival tour. Do you want everybody to make fun of your movie? That’s how you do it. My advice? Don’t think it. Don’t say it. Don’t see it.
Ms. Silver Screen 