Urban Legend movies normally go one way, and it’s right down the toilet.
Don’t get me wrong. When done properly, they can be absolute gems! Just look at Clive Barker’s Candyman!
But then, on the other hand, just look at the Urban Legend movies. I know, who farted, am I right?
So, when I stumbled across this low-budget, straight to video horror flick, I had a pretty bad feeling I was in for 90 minutes of nonsense.
However, as a huge Horror enthusiast, I don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing, especially when Horror’s foundations are built on string budget amateur flicks, so where’s the harm, right?
So, basically, The Bye Bye Man is an entity that, once you know his name and say it out loud, he comes and gets yo candy ass, and if you tell anybody his name, you then have to kill them before they tell anyone else, otherwise the Bye Bye Man goes on a mass killing spree and you can only stop him by making sure no one knows his name…including yourself.
Sounds terrible, right? That’s what I thought. I thought it sounded clumsy, not well thought out, and just all round mish-mashed to the point where urban legends are now running out of ideas (next up, a movie called Bad Chicken Pie, an urban legend tale where if you eat an undercooked chicken pie, you die of salmonella, unless you find a doctor who gives you treatment but he must also be a veterinarian named Steve who you must then kill afterwards so he can’t treat anyone else, in fear of cross contamination…same sort of thing, I reckon).
However! Cool your jets, Jetson, because this movie was actually, despite its lunacy, pretty damn good! I’m not even joking!
The acting was bang-on all round, which was shocking, the character developments were actually very well done, the story unfolded into something that grabbed my attention, and Doug Jones plays the titular character!
The gore was…well, almost non-existent to a point where it was laughable in places (point-blank range 12-gauge shotgun to the chest and not a drop; seriously…) and the CGI was just awful, but not allowing this to take anything away from the film, I would happily sit and watch this movie again.
There is one character in it (the leading man’s niece), however, who is just fucking awful and should be shot from a cannon into the sun as far as I’m concerned, but other than that we get a pretty solid movie which somehow manages to stand up tall on its somewhat weak knees.
Aaron's Spoiler-Free Verdict: So yes, this was a surprising little horror gem that I thought would be terrible, but actually turned out to be a good bit of fun, but made the error of taking itself a bit too seriously. - 6.5/10
Aaron James Waters is a best-selling Pulp Fiction writer who has written more books than he's actually read.
He's also the rotten apple of the group who thinks this whole Star Wars thing needs to hurry up and die already.
You can find Aaron's debut novel on Amazon!
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