#byebyeman

The questions come quickly in this curious catastrophe, which opens on a house in Madison, Wisconsin in 1969, as sharply dressed Larry Redmon, played by Leigh Whannell, pulls a shotgun out of his car, asking his neighbors if they told anyone “the name,” before shooting them in graphic fashion. With each burst of Larry’s pump-action shotgun, The Bye-Bye Man splatters the viewer with questions. Who is this man? What is this name? Why can’t you say it? Who saw Saw and though Leigh Whannell should get another acting job??

Like a carrot on a string, or perhaps like Love Kernels, The Bye-Bye Man gives us glimpses, peaks at its underlying form. But even when all eye-eyes are on the Bye-Bye, more questions are raised. For example, the opening unfolds with a mostly unbroken camera take in technically-impressive fashion... that is undone by the confusing staging, in which one of Larry’s victims apparently decides it would be smarter to get out of his wheelchair and crawl along the floor to attempt to escape Larry’s wrath, instead of, you know, rolling away. 

The film cuts, and we’re taken to present day, introduced to a trio of university students who decide to rent a decrepit home for the semester. There’s John, the kind of token black character that makes comments like “All the dishes are white! Just saying!” when the trio explore the home’s basement.

Then, there’s Sasha, the kind of woman character who is also just a girlfriend.

Finally, there’s Elliot, whose most distinguishing characteristic is that he sends his girlfriend notes made out of letter cut-outs from magazines, just like a serial killer. But he’s also a white male, and so he’s our protagonist… and also the demographic most likely to be an actual serial killer.

After moving a bunch of furniture, including beds and a nightstand, out of the basement storage, the trio settle into their new home. Sasha sits at a giant Mac computer in their bedroom, as Elliot reads a quote from a book. “Coins symbolize the wonder and terror of fortune. Fortune truly is like a coin tossed by the hand of God.”

“Thanks for finding me that quote,” Sasha says, as she finishes typing, giving the audience the most frightful element of the film yet: finding appropriate sources to fill up word-count in a hastily-written college paper! Now that’s something I’m happy I’ve said bye-bye to! 

It’s never clear what the topic of Sasha’s paper is, and thus neither is it clear why she would need this particular quote about coins. Nor is it clear why coins subsequently become a running motif of the Bye-Bye Man, a symbol of his impending arrival. Perhaps it is because, like all defining aspects of the Bye-Bye Man’s character, such as his unexplained fascination with trains, it was seemingly decided by the flip of a coin.

The following evening, Elliot’s brother, Virgil, and his young niece, Alice, visit the house. “She’s the one,” Elliot remarks to his brother over beers, gesturing to Sasha, who mingles with other guests. “She did all this herself,” he adds.

“Dad, how did you know Mom was the one?”

“I knew when she put up some flags and threw a small party for the least distinguishing group there is, college drunks, and then for some reason also invited my seven-year-old niece to this kegger. And she did it all by herself!”

“Oh, I see. Dad, one more question.”

“Yes”

“Where do Bye-Bye Babies come from?”

“Well, when a coin and a train love each other very much…”

Anyway, Alice wanders off in this party, and investigates a small doorway in Elliot’s bedroom. As she peers in the door, a door on the opposite side of the room opens up and a poorly-rendered CGI mutt looks out, as if The Bye-Bye Man is in fact the worst episode of Scooby-Doo ever made.

And yes, that’s counting Be Cool, Scooby Doo!

Alice later tells Elliot she found a coin in his room. He goes to investigate, and discovers the drawer of his night stand contains a spiral of writing, reading “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” repeatedly. He peels back the paper covering to find a name scratched into the bottom of the drawer.

You guessed it! Frank Stallone!

Oh, wait, no, sorry, it’s “The Bye-Bye Man.”

Sasha’s psychically “sensitive” friend Kim desires to host a séance to cleanse the house of evil spirits, but the ceremony goes wrong when Kim’s eyes roll back in her head, and she begins to chant, “Don’t think it, don’t say it, don’t think it, don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” Sasha and John ask.

Elliot looks up and states, “The Bye-Bye Man.”

And the candles are all instantly blown out.

Now, you may be wondering, “What part of ‘Don’t say it’ did Elliot not understand? I mean, how hard is it to just not say something?”

Well, may I remind you, Elliot is a white man, and thus it is quite difficult for him to just not say certain words when told he shouldn’t! If the Bye-Bye Man can say it, why can’t I??

After Elliot speaks the Bye-Bye Man’s name that evening, strange things begin to happen to the four of them. Sasha develops a never-ending cold. Elliot sees a strange man in a cloak in the corner of his bedroom. John can’t get it up when having sex with Kim!

…Well, I don’t think that last one counts as a supernatural phenomenon, Bye-Bye Man screenwriters. 1 in 5, they say!

John drives Kim back to the dorm the following morning, and briefly has a vision of Kim’s hair being swarmed by maggots. For some reason, this doesn’t help his impotence. Upon getting back to the house, John runs up to Sasha and declares, “You are clean and beautiful.” Everyone, including John, is confused by his declaration, but Elliot still begins to feel insecure about his relationship.

Other supernatural events include Elliot having dreams about his friends all standing naked on a train track, which, again, isn’t necessarily supernatural but it still as arousingly-bereft as John’s suffering. Another is John discovering that the Bye-Bye Man placed a GIF of himself in John’s photo library, revealing himself to be the dankest of memers.

And, yes, I don’t understand what “dankest memer” means anymore than I understand this movie and its GIF-based horror!

As weird events continue, Sasha grows increasingly paranoid. “The Bye-Bye Man’s not real,” Elliot says, continuing to be bad at the whole ‘not saying it’ thing. “He’s just an idea in our heads.”

“That’s real. Ideas are real,” Sasha retorts. 

It’s convincing logic, especially when looked at in reverse. It’s clear that no one involved in the making of The Bye-Bye Man had any idea what this movie was supposed to be and I’m fairly certain that it’s not a real movie.

In search of answers, Elliot goes to the university library. He sits down at a computer, and searches for “The Bye-Bye Man,” receiving zero results. He instead searches “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” and receives one result, a dead article in the library’s archive. With the help of the overly-earnest librarian, Watkins, Elliot retrieves the file, and discovers an article by Larry Redmon about mysterious murders, with “Don’t think it, don’t say it” written in a spiral on the back of it.

Now I understand that library archiving is a thankless job, but I really must take issue with how this dead article was categorized. I mean, the article itself mentions the Bye-Bye Man several times, and yet some unpaid intern thought it would be wiser to tag the piece solely according to the nonsensical scribblings on the back of the page? No wonder information literacy in this country has dropped to the point that some producers thought The Bye-Bye Man would be a sensible investment!

As Elliot reads the article, the film flashes back to 1969 to show the aftermath of Larry’s massacre. After killing all his friends, Larry turns the gun on himself, but finds he is out of bullets.

See, people, this is why Americans need access to high-capacity assault rifles! If everyday Americans don’t have the ability to efficiently murder a large assortment of their brethren, how can we be expected to successfully fight off the tyranny of the Bye-Bye Man!

You might think I went a step too far just there, but what if I told you that the plot of this godforsaken movie is that the Bye-Bye Man is indeed the cause of all massacres in human history. 

Yes, indeed, good sir, the Bye-Bye Man caused it all, and I will not rest until every man, woman, and child has their own personal Bye-Bye Man so that we can all finally be safe! The only thing that can stop a Bad Man with a Bye-Bye Man is a Good Man with a Bye-Bye Man!!

Larry finds a work-around to his lack of ammunition though, as he chugs a bottle of drain cleaner while the Bye-Bye Man approaches. Yes, he doesn’t just drink some Drain-O, he chugs it, a perfect metaphor for a movie that doesn’t just drink an incompetence-laced Kool-Aid, but chugs the whole damn thing.

Returning to the present day, Elliot and Watkins realize that Larry tried to erase all knowledge of the Bye-Bye Man’s name from existence. “If you remove all references to something in the past, that past is gone,” Watkins asserts.

You know, you really gotta start sympathizing with the Bye-Bye Man at this point in the film, what with people wanting to straight-up define him out of existence and all. Hashtag nothing but respect for my queer horror icon!

Elliot enters a fever state and begins to cross out the Bye-Bye Man’s name with a pen, an all-around inefficient method for making something unreadable. As he looks up and sees The Bye-Bye Man approaching, Elliot begins to grow increasingly fearful, not stopping to consider that perhaps the Bye-Bye Man is just a frequent patron of the public library system. In fact, perhaps he even has a future as a library spokesman. “Read!” the posters will read in bold letters, above a picture of the Bye Bye Man pointing at you. “but don’t read it.”

Elliot suddenly realizes that hours have passed since he began to cross out the name, and he scrambles to find all his friends that know about the Bye-Bye Man, starting with Kim. He heads to Kim’s dorm and rings the intercom. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Do you mean right now, or since the party?” Kim replies, revealing herself to be the type of person who when asked “What’s up?” will indeed proceed to tell you just exactly what is up!

And the answer, of course, would be “Not John’s Johnson, if you know what I mean! Hey-o!”

Elliot and Kim drive off to go find the others, realizing along the way that the Bye-Bye Man can make you see things that aren’t there, like coins or a train or, presumably, potential in his movie franchise.

Despite this, exactly one minute later, Kim screams at Elliot to stop the car because she sees a car crash on a nearby train track. Elliot discovers a bloody hammer in her bag, realizing she intends to kill him. He chases after her as she rushes towards the train track, just as a train approaches. He’s too late, and she is hit by the train and killed.

The film cuts to the aftermath, as cops and firefighter swarm the tracks to investigate the mysterious death. Elliot is approached by Detective Shaw, played by none other than Carrie Anne-Moss, which is a perfect fit, because the only way to explain why The Bye-Bye Man suddenly drops a super notable actor into the mix 2/3rds of the way through its runtime is that there’s a glitch in the Matrix. 

John and Sasha show up and Elliot becomes aggressive. “Swear you won’t say it!” he shouts at the two, raising concern in Detective Shaw. Sasha promises to not say it, but John won’t, which, as an African-American, is his right to decide, goddammit!

Detective Shaw takes Elliot in for questioning and presses him to tell her the name he is so concerned about. Elliot refuses, saying that honesty is not always the best policy. “What if you saw the worst crime scene ever? A mass murder at a school,” he asks. “If your children asked how your day was, would you be able to answer honestly?”

Detective Shaw contemplates this, but I don’t think Elliot’s argument holds up. I mean, is the worst crime scene ever really a mass murder at a school? Seems to me the worst crime scene ever would have to be something that’s not an common part of everyday life!

Shaw lets Elliot go, who heads back to his house and hears moaning coming from John’s bedroom. He opens the door to see a really-quite-unusually-graphic scene of John having sex with Sasha. Rather than be happy for his friend solving his impotence problem, Elliot becomes enraged, picks up a baseball bat, and beats John over the head. As John collapses, Elliot realizes that the whole thing was an illusion. Yes, the Bye-Bye Man, in all his poorly-defined power, is apparently quite partial to using them to make pornography. Men, amirite?

Hashtag not all Bye-Bye Men.

Elliot spots an address for the house where the nightstand came from, one that Sasha acquired earlier from a old gardener who was a little too into the “two handsome guys” renting his house for college. Simultaneously, Elliot receives a phone call from Watkins, who says she’s been seeing weird things ever since she said the Bye-Bye Man. “I’ll be right over,” she says.

Now, I know there’s some leeway when someone says they’ll be right over, but usually I don’t expect the person to intend to just walk the long distance on an empty road to my house, holding a knife above their head the whole time. But Mrs. Watkins apparently does, and is thus unintentionally run over by Elliot in his car.

The inclusion of this whole librarian subplot may initially seem bizarre and disconnected, but a clear understanding of the genius on display in The Bye-Bye Man reveals that this is actually a bit of brilliant bit of social commentary on the film’s part: an insightful critique of how the economic devaluation of both librarians and African-American women leaves many unable to afford a car! It’s really quite a brilliant subplot, if you think about it!

But maybe, as they say, don’t think it.

Elliot arrives at the address to meet Larry’s widow, played by Faye Dunaway. Now, you may wonder what exactly Faye Dunaway is doing in a movie like this. But, well, may I remind you that, unlike her Bonnie and Clyde co-star, she was wise enough not to try to announce “Emma Stone from La La Land” as the Best Picture Winner, so she knows a little something or other about not saying names you’re not supposed to say!

Elliot sits down with the Widow Redmon, who begins to describe more events from 1969. “That was the day my life went turn, turn, turn,” she exposits, in a turn of phrase that makes even less sense than this movie.

As the Widow Redmon regales Elliot with the tale of her interactions with her husband, rambling about how the Bye-Bye Man was making him do horrible things, Elliot comes to a realization. “The more we fear him, the more powerful he becomes!” he exclaims.

The realization is not just a relief to Elliot, who discovers that he knows how to beat the Bye-Bye Man, but is surely a relief to all those in the audience of The Bye-Bye Man. After all, if the Bye-Bye Man only has power if people are afraid of his name, then, well, I think we’re all pretty safe.

I mean, the Bye-Bye Man? Really? That’s what you’re going with?

“He’s in me, he’s in my friends,” Elliot mumbles, as he tries to collect his thoughts.

Hashtag queer icon.

“How could you figure it out and my Larry not?” the Widow Redmon frets, as she stabs a nearby fireplace with a fire-poker. When she does, she becomes suddenly engulfed in flames before Elliot’s eyes and begs him to shoot her. Elliot realizes it’s only an illusion from the Bye-Bye Man, and the vision disappears. Yes, we should have all known that the only thing that’s actually going down in flames here is Faye Dunaway’s career.

Elliot arrives back at the house just in time to see John, suffering from hallucinations, stabbing Sasha with scissors. Elliot, having apparently already said “bye-bye” to his realization from moments ago, shoots John dead. Upon doing so, he discovers that it was a hallucination, that Sasha was the one stabbing John, and that he just shot his girlfriend dead. 

The Bye-Bye Man arrives, dressed in some pretty comfortable looking duds, and… just kind of pokes Elliot. Then, Elliot’s brother and niece show up at the front door, and, unable to keep himself from saying the Bye-Bye Man’s name, Elliot shoots himself before he can pass on the name to them.

In the film’s final moments, Elliot’s brother, Virgil, drives away in shock with his daughter Alice, not sure how to explain to her that Elliot is dead. Alice mentions that, when at the house, she found coins in a nightstand out by the trash. 

“Was there something else in that table?” Virgil asks, in perfectly normal human fashion.

“There was some writing,” Alice reveals.

“What did this writing say?” Virgil asks, as the ominous music builds.

Alice pauses for a moment, then laughs. “Daddy! You know I can’t read in the dark. What do you think I am, a flashlight?”

And the movie freeze-frames as the canned studio-laughter kicks in.

…

I mean, not really, but you believed it for a second, didn’t you?

The question of why Alice thought it was noteworthy to mention this writing in a drawer if she wasn’t even able to read it is but one of many that a viewer is left with at the end of The Bye-Bye Man, one of the most thoroughly confusing films made in a very long time.

Bye-Bye Man? More like, The Why-Why Man, amirite?

As in, why exactly was the Bye-Bye Man so obsessed with trains? Why does he have a dog? Why does the Bye-Bye Man not want people to say his name or think of him? I mean, most people are warmed by the idea that others are thinking of them! And Why-ut were the Bye-Bye Man’s powers or motivations exactly?

Why-Why, indeed, dear blog reader.

But! Since it is such a special day and special occasion, I humbly ask, dear blog reader, that you indulge my obscene word-count for a while longer, so that I might delight you with a proposition.

Picture, if you will, a world ravaged by a fear of the unknown. A world consumed with confusion, an inability to discern what is truth and what is fake news. A world in desperate need of answers.

A world in need of the solace that can only be found in a Bye-Bye Man sequel!

Picture, if you will: THE BYE-BYE MAN 2: BI HARDER!

[sic]

The first film left us with many questions, but all will be revealed in this sequel. Why does the Bye-Bye Man warn people “Don’t think it, don’t say it?”

Why, it all stems from his tragic backstory! You see, the Bye-Bye Man, resident queer icon, is in fact not another example of queer-baiting, but a supernatural being who, once upon a time when he was just a Bye-Bye Boy, struggled with his bi-sexuality. He liked Bye-Bye Women and Bye-Bye Men! But this was not tolerated by his family, who sent him away to a camp designed to purge him of such thoughts. A camp that went a step further than “Don’t ask, don’t tell!” “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” they would force him to repeat!

Under pressure, The Bye-Bye Man succumbed. “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” he would recite ad nauseum. But, fear not, dear blog reader! All hope is not lost for our intrepid hero! For years later, The Bye-Bye Man’s sexuality would emerge again from that heinous reprogramming when he unexpectedly fell in love with a man.

A man who is none other than…

Justin Timberlake.

Yes, indeed. You see, back in the year 2000, the heyday of NSYNC, Justin Timberlake experienced a meet-cute on a train with the Bye-Bye Man, when JT asked for a quarter, and The Bye-Bye Man accidentally handed him a gold Greek coin instead. The two started quite the romance, one not only founded on physical passion, but on creative energy. The two wrote many songs together, and also adopted a dog as a couple. 

However, with pressure from his boy-band producers to retain a certain image for their target demographic, Timberlake was left with a choice: abandon his musical career to be with the Bye-Bye Man, or to continue down the path of fame and fortune!

And sadly, in another tragedy in the poor life of the Bye-Bye Man, Timberlake chose fame and fortune, breaking it off with his lover.

In fact, the song “Bye Bye Bye” was Timberlake’s break-up song, a clear message that he was saying “Bye” to his partner, Bye-Bye.

Yes, you were probably always curious why the music video for “Bye Bye Bye” took place on top of a train, weren’t you? Well, now you know!

And so, dejected, the Bye-Bye Man reverted to his old ways, becoming the Man we saw in the first film. Overcome with grief and unable to express his true self, he pushed his “Don’t think it, Don’t say it” mantra on others. He used coins and trains to torment others, as they were now painful reminders to him of the love he lost. The dog he was to care for with JT developed a taste for human flesh without the nurture of two dads.

Yes, it is quite sad, dear blog reader. But a happy ending is on the horizon. The sequel will cut to events taking place after the first film, in which the Bye-Bye Man encounters a support group, and rediscovers his Pride. Finally coming to terms with his sexuality, the Bye-Bye Man finds peace with himself. But, still hurt over his treatment at the hands of JT, the Bye-Bye Man’s newfound friends encourage him to seek catharsis.

And so, the film culminates in a technical showcase, a Pride concert of bright rainbow lights and large crowds. The lights dim, and a spotlight falls on The Bye-Bye Man, who takes the stage to cheers. He has finally found a family who accepts him, and with the righteous fury of a lover scorned, and channeling all the rage of his tragic history into productive means, The Bye-Bye Man flips off his hood and belts out a powerful solo ballad, one that re-appropriates the song that once haunted him so.

And thus the hit single of the film will of course be:

“Bye Bye Bye” by The Bi Bye-Bye Man.

 Thank you very much, ladies and Bye-Bye Gentlemen. And Happy Halloween!

I hope you have enjoyed this volume of The Night X Came Home, and that you will join me for another maddening journey next year, because, for as much as these films take a toll on my sanity, these blogs are simply too much fun for me to ever say “Bye-Bye” to.

The Bye-Bye Man is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.