What would you do if you were followed by an entity that slowly walks toward you and kills you when it reaches you, no matter where you go? It cannot be stopped nor killed. The only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to someone by having sex with him/her, like a twisted game of “tag”.
This movie was one of our favorite horror movies of the last decade, and I can’t believe that we never wrote anything about it… The plot is amazing and the casting is excellent. It has a great vibe and a sense of dread that is felt almost immediately.
The characters are not the usual horror idiot that makes you think “why didn’t they do this or that…”. They address the danger as real people would, they’re not magically filled with some convenient insight and they’re not face-palmingly idiotic, either.
It was already a rerun, and we’ll probably watch it again, some day.
A theater in Montreal, Quebec was supposed to play Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019), but this film played instead, causing the children in the audience to run out crying.
I don’t think that an horror movie ever had me cry, unless it was really bad and I cried out of boredom, which isn’t the case of this movie. Ok, it isn’t as frightening as the other movies in The Conjuring universe, but we had a good Saturday evening. It follows a simple pattern: kids are cursed – evil comes for them – the mother finds a priest who can help – big fight – evil is vanquished. Even if it isn’t really original, it worked and we didn’t fall asleep before the end.
There’s a demon who listens and if he hears his name, he curses you. At that moment, you go crazy, you see things where there are none and become so paranoid that you eventually end up murdering people.
The first thing that bothers me, and I don’t want to overthink it, is the demon’s name. You’d think that wherever the entity hangs out on his free time, his buddies would tell him that his name is pretty lame. Do you imagine: “Good morning Belzebuth. Good morning to you, Azmodeus. Hey, how are you doing today, The Bye Bye Man?”. That’s the lamest demon name ever!
If the rhythm of the movie would have been better and the secret cursed word less ridiculous, it could have been a good horror movie. Unfortunately, The Bye Bye Man is awfully slow, there’s way too much dialogues between the few scenes that actually matter. It’s too bad, because the idea was pretty good.
So, at first, there was The Bye Bye Man. But then my eyes were closing and all that was left was the Night Night Man, and it was me. Even Carrie-Anne Moss’ usual great acting couldn’t keep me awake.
