The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

It’d be easy to dismiss The Bye Bye Man as another generic horror – the latest in a long line, in fact, over the last few years. It’d be easy because, well, it is largely a generic horror – but one with a frantic opening that sets the scene for what many were hoping to be the birth of a new character in the horror hall of fame – one that has its roots in a short story that has gone viral in the last few years.

Unfortunately, despite several wink-wink moments, this is not the self-referential masterpiece it tries to be. The opening words of the trailer alone gave horror fans enough reason to roll their eyes, as one of the main characters warns another to no say his name or even think about him – him being the eponymous Bye Bye Man.

The set-up is also all too familiar: three students’ curiosities get the better of them when they go digging into a number of gruesome murders, only to find the titular character is behind them. There’s something almost nostalgic about the whole premise which treats the Bye Bye Man in the same way that Nightmare on Elm Street treats Freddy Kruger, for example – in fact, the film does well in positioning its villain as an overbearing, inescapable monster.

But for every clever meta-moment – and there’s not that many of them – there are others that straddle the line of cheesy far too closely and there’s not one moment or scene that can be described as surprising or uniquely engaging.

If you are to enjoy this film, you’ll need to accept the pillar of post-modernism that originality is dead. The Bye Bye Man plays out like a pastiche of influences; but together, its one hunk of a derivative mess. In a genre like horror, ‘the homage’ is inevitable, even encouraged, and it can be done well. The Bye Bye Man, however, neither packages its influences cleverly nor does it bring anything new to the table, while the pacing, the shallow characters and flat direction severely undermine anything it has going for it.

Not unlike the aforementioned warning, you’re better off not thinking about The Bye Bye Man.