The Bye Bye Man

Three friends (Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Cressida Bonas) stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man (Doug Jones), a mysterious figure they discover is the root cause of the evil behind man's most unspeakable acts.

At some point, horror is going to have answer for the unspeakable crimes it's visited upon cinema as a whole. It's now a statistical likelihood that there are now more terrible horror films than marginally good horror films. Case in point is The Bye Bye Man, a film so schlocky, poorly and cheaply made, so devoid of anything original or noteworthy about it that you'd almost be forgiven for thinking your mind has been zapped for 90 minutes of memory.

In fact, the film is so bad that it's nothing short of crazy that it even got a theatrical release. This is bargain basement, straight-to-DVD filmmaking with the kind of ineptitude that you can only get from cheap horrors. It's not even enjoyable in so-bad-it's-good-way, either. It really does have nothing to offer beyond a chuckle here or there, primarily from the bad acting.

As you'd expect, there's really nobody of note in the cast list either - save for three actors who must have really needed a paycheque. Doug Jones may be recognisable to cult fans, as he's turned up in a number of Guillermo Del Toro's works. Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays a detective and looks suitably embarrassed, crops up for a scene or two and isn't referenced again. Faye Dunaway, meanwhile, is simply there for exposition. Faye Dunaway, people. She was in Chinatown. Now she's in this. If ever there was a metaphor for how people can brought low, Bye Bye Man and Faye Dunaway is it.

The three young actors are pretty much terrible in their roles and, from a cursory glance at iMDB, it's easy to see why. One was a Celebrity Big Brother contestant, one of them dated Prince Harry (yes, really) and the other is a 31-year old man playing a college student. So, yeah.

The direction from Stacy Title begs several questions - firstly, was she blind? Did she forget how to set a scene or edit? Secondly, did she really think this was OK? Was she happy to put this out into the world with her name on it? In any case, this is going to follow Stacy Title around - just like the title character of the film. All in all, the Bye Bye Man shouldn't have even made it to a cinema. It's a schlocky, boring, low-rent horror with zero imagination, roundly poor performances and a script that reads like it was hacked together from Wes Craven's discarded droppings.

Don't think it, don't say it, don't - you guessed it - see it.