The Bye Bye Man opens with a prologue that perfectly establishes exactly what kind of movie the viewer is in for in its anemic execution. A man and a woman exchange cryptic dialogue about if the woman in question told anyone....something, with each character being played by an actor whose dialing it up to 11 in terms of over dramatic line readings which just make the already subpar dialogue feel even more slipshod than it already is. A bunch of gun violence and an oncoming train show up on-screen right after that and then we get to the plot proper which concerns Elliot (Douglas Smith) and Sasha (Cressida Bonas) moving in together into this old home.
The place seems pretty creepy to the duo and it only becomes even more unsettling once Elliot discovers, nestled inside a drawer in a dresser, a bunch of writing instructing whoever's reading it to "DON'T THINK IT, DON'T SAY IT" and there's also, for some reason, the name The Bye Bye Man etched at the bottom of the drawer. Elliot says the name aloud and that draws out the actual Bye Bye Man (Doug Jones) who proceeds to make Elliot, Sasha and their friend John (Lucien Laviscount) see an assortment of visions that break the trio's sanity. Is there any way to say Bye Bye to The Bye Bye Man? Maybe a Faye Dunaway (yes, Faye Dunaway) cameo will have some answers...
Keeping horror movie icons like Leatherface and Freddy Kruger simple in their power sets and motivation helps make them such scary creations. Leatherface is territorial, killing anyone who trespasses onto his families property with a chainsaw while Freddy is killing teenagers in an act of vengeance by way of slaughtering them in their dreams. By contrast, the titular boogeyman of The Bye Bye Man is a nonsensical creation whose entire reason for existing is frustratingly unclear. Is he doing this just for funsies or does he have a larger goal in mind by driving a bunch of innocent college students insane? It's never clear and the fact that he's a terribly non-scary or non-intimidating looking fellow (despite having talented performer Doug Jones on hand to portray the character) just makes his lack of a concrete motivation or personality all the more egregious.
Now, a lack of coherent motivation works fine for something like The Blair Witch Project because that movie is all about being scared by the unknown but The Bye Bye Man spends the majority of its runtime having its trio of lead characters searching for knowledge on The Bye Bye Man as well as grappling with a bunch of tired relationship drama that stems from their dwindling grasp on reality. Watching these protagonists slowly lose their sanity results in negative amounts of scares as tired jump scares fill up the screen and a PG-13 rating ensures that even those obsessed with gory demises won't even get a few over-the-top death scenes to compensate for the constantly abysmal storytelling.
Despite spending so much of the story on the relationship grievances of its three leads, the actual characters of The Bye Bye Man are handled even worse than the scares. Absolutely terrible line deliveries (which fits the dreadfully-written dialogue, I guess) are the order of the day here and none of the three main characters have believable chemistry with one another. All of the actors are framed in amateurish camerawork and lighting that make the The Bye Bye Man look like something you'd find gathering dust in the $1 bin at Big Lots, not something that received a theatrical release in 2017. Somehow though, The Bye Bye Man did get into theaters and we are all the poorer for it as a species. Do not see this scare-free movie, it's absolutely worthless.
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