‘Bye Bye Man’ wears out its welcome

The horror film feels off, as if along with the souls of the college kids in the movie, the bad guy made off with 20 pivotal minutes of film as well.

There’s a lack of consistency, giving the impression that every scene was shot in one take, a few weeks apart from each other.

Who, after seeing the reaper-like bad guy and his scabby hound in person, in a world where Courtyards by Marriott exist, would return to their scary Bye Bye Man house at bedtime?

“The Bye Bye Man” begins, promisingly, with a flashback scene to 1969, where an apologetic journalist is taking a shotgun to anyone — including loved ones — who said the Bye Bye Man’s name.

[...] we flash forward to the present, where three college students move into a giant house that could easily sleep an entire fraternity.

Some awkward edits of violence and sex scenes suggest the movie may have been spliced to ensure a PG-13 rating.

Both flashbacks have a dark comic timing that the present-day scenes never get right.

Some of the sequences with the Bye Bye Man (played with gangly menace by Doug Jones) are just weird enough to be interesting.

[...] Faye Dunaway and Carrie-Anne Moss show up in small parts, exuding more coolness in a couple of minutes than any of the young actors in the leads.