A sinister force begins haunting three college students who have moved into off-campus housing, causing a wild killing spree.
The trailer for this upcoming horror movie assures us that the events depicted are based on true events, something that many horror movies try desperately to make us all believe. Of course, none of them are, and to suggest they are is insulting, but Fargo did it, so there’s their way out.
The details of Stacy Title‘s latest horror film are thin, with most of the plot under wraps. But it’s not a far leap to make, based on this clip, that it’s a standard possession movie with very little to offer other than lots of horrific, senseless death.
The generic title is the best place to start though, in what sounds like a children’s book, which is probably the intent as the story is surely based on some old, passed-down story of a boogey-man character (and thus the ‘true events’ kick in). It’s the equivalent of a movie blaming a mass shooting on a game of duck, duck, goose.
That said, the trailer actually has one truly disturbing moment, that of a man with a shotgun stalking two victims as they flee to their home. This one brief segment should be the basis for the entire film, but instead it veers sharply into the tired, tropes of horror cliché with teenagers running from a specter in a possessed home.
At least the villain is well-cast. Doug Jones plays titular Bye Bye Man, and if anyone can give that ho-hum character some dread, it is him. While the name and face might not be recognizable, he was the wonderfully creepy Fauno / Pale Man in Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth and Abe Sapien in the Hellboy franchise. That at least give hope that The Bye Bye Man might be memorable. Unfortunately, he seems trapped in a wholly unimaginative story.
The Bye Bye Man open June 3, 2016
Director:
Stacy Title
Writers:
Robert Damon Schneck (short story), Jonathan Penner (screenplay)
Stars:
Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Cressida Bonas, Doug Jones