If it feels familiar, that’s because you have seen movies before and your brain is capable of forming memories. Congratulations on that! You’re more advanced than the people who made
The Bye Bye Man, who thought they were doing something original. College sweethearts Elliot (Douglas Smith) and Sasha (Cressida Bonas) move into a giant old house together, with Elliot’s best friend John (Lucien Laviscount) along to help with rent. Guess what? There’s a spooky bedside table in the basement with “Don't think it, don’t say it” scrawled all over it, referring to the title boogeyman, who’s empowered by being thought about. The three have hallucinations that inspire jealousy and rage. (Visions of things that aren’t there and wouldn’t be scary if they were, are, by definition, not scary, yet director Stacy Title puts most of her eggs in that basket.) Throw in a psychic, a research trip to the library, and a visit to an old woman who remembers the past and you’ve got yourself a generic, pointless, thrill-less PG-13 horror movie! You can have it.
By
Eric D. Snider