Review: BYE BYE MAN

By Jose Jara

BYE BYE MAN
Review
By: Daniel Guzman

DON’T THINK IT, DON’T WATCH IT!

The credits roll and all around me I here laughter echoing everywhere throughout the room. The audience is still chuckling at this laugh out loud riot of a film they just watched. Only problem is this was not a comedy, it was a horror flick! Bye Bye Man, is a horror movie that doesn’t scare. I was wondering what route the director Stacy Title would choose to deliver the fix I was looking to get in being frightened. Would she try and pile on scenes that have you jumping when something or someone pops out of nowhere on the screen? Or, would she get us to hold our breath in suspense when we want to stop someone in the film from entering a room we don’t want them to go into? Unfortunately, there are far too few of either of these scenarios taking place in Bye Bye Man.

Bye Bye Man is the typical b rated movie that has young naïve characters that die in pointless ways, with a supernatural villain whom we never find out who he is or how he came to be. The story is about 3 college friends, 2 of which are a couple, while the 3rd wheel is the lead character’s childhood best friend who is too friendly with his best friend’s girl. They decide on renting out this old secluded house out of campus that lends itself as the source of where evil shall spew out of through a mysterious nightstand that has repetitive writing inside of it saying, “Don’t think it, don’t say it.” Underneath this writing inside the drawer night stand is the answer to what the writing doesn’t want you to say…..wait for it…….BYE BYE MAN!!!! Once you say these 3 words, your days are pretty much numbered and will be temporarily filled with a not so frightening scarred up man in a cloak stalking you, accompanied by a poorly cgi version of an overly cooked dog from hell, and a silver coin that  seems to fall on the ground everytime the Bye Bye Man is near. Oh, and there are also illusions that the Bye Bye Man can somehow make you think you see, but are not real that will eventually be your own demise. Anyone whom you speak about Bye Bye Man to will eventually die. So the characters have to keep on thinking about not thinking about Bye Bye Man, which we know never works. Don’t think about pink elephants, don’t say pink elephants. See what I did?!

I’m okay with putting up with a lot of terrible acting that comes with most horror movies. I can even put up with a bunch of unanswered questions about the source of this evil that comes to scare, torture, and eventually kill everyone in its path. What I can’t take is putting up with all that and for the movie to not come through on the scares. Many of the scenes that happened in Bye Bye Man were more comical than scary given the audience’s reactions to them. The film’s  PG-13 rating causes certain scenes to look as if they haven’t been fully edited, such as a man blasting away at a number of people with a shotgun who are somehow bloodless after such a violent death. Just doesn’t feel natural, you know? The movie has a lot cheesy convenient things that just seem so unoriginal. For example, the lead characters girlfriend, Sasha, befriends a college student named Kim who is a spiritual psychic and feels there is bad juju in this house. Kim decides to have a spiritual meditation session at a round table in the house where the 2 male characters go from being skeptical of what she is doing to being frightened or in denial of what they all sensed was supernatural. Possibly the scariest thing about this film is the fact that it comes out on  Friday the 13th.  So, please, take my advice. I have already fallen on this sword for you. Don’t see it, don’t bother.