In a majority of horror movies, the main goal is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and relatively terrified.  It is evident that the makers of The Bye-Bye Man didn’t keep this factor in mind. Instead of the audience being at the edge of their seat, they instead were joking about the movie and its script/effects. The movie, to the audience, was literally so bad that it was funny, and that’s not what a horror movie should be. Another thing that was a huge disappointment while watching the movie was that in every scene, everything just kind of skimmed the surface. There were no details, no reasoning, and always had the audience questioning “is that it?”

The Bye-Bye Man is based off of a story that when people view/hear the name “Bye-Bye Man,” the creature engulfs itself into the lives of who have seen/heard his name. The characters spend a majority of their time trying to not have anything to do with the name itself, always repeating “Don’t think it, don’t say it.”  The Bye-Bye Man, however, gets more powerful as people focus on not saying his name, and as he gains more power he is able to cause hallucinations of things that aren’t really happening. These hallucinations cause people to become violent and even insane, until they end up killing others and even themselves. The Bye-Bye Man can only be spread by someone speaking his name to another, and the only way to stop him is to make sure that the only people who know his name are those already being affected by him.

Most trailers, as many people know, tweak the movie’s quality a little bit, making it seem better than what it actually is. The Bye-Bye Man is a prime example of this, since the trailer’s quality is completely different from that of the movie’s. The trailer makes the audience prepare themselves for a good scare, and then when they watch the movie, they realize it’s nothing even remotely horrific, like the trailer made it seem. This, in turn, actually makes the movie seem worse than actually is, because if people didn’t come in with a false sense of hope then maybe they wouldn’t feel so negatively towards the movie.

This movie, though stated as a horror movie, is clearly unfit for that category. The storyline is slow yet vague, which contributes to the overall feeling of confusion. At many points of the movie, the audience expected more and ended up getting way less than they hoped. The Bye-Bye Man is most definitely a movie that would be considered a waste of money if it was watched in the movie theater. Don’t think it. Don’t say it. And definitely don’t see it. Bye bye, man.