YMMV / The Bye Bye Man

• Cliché Storm: One of the biggest criticisms of the film is that it borrows heavily from other horror films, but fails to do anything particularly original on its own, and it doesn't even do those clichés well.
• Complete Monster: The Bye Bye Man is a sadistic entity who haunts anyone who learns his name, driving them to insanity and eventually causing them to murder others. After forcing a teenager to kill several people, the Bye Bye Man began terrorizing a reporter and is implied to have driven him to murder eight people before killing himself. After Elliot and his friends learn the Bye Bye Man's name, he slowly drives them insane, causing one to be hit by a train and framing Elliot for the death, and later makes a woman kill her children before causing her death as well. The Bye Bye Man then causes the friends to attack one another and tricks Elliot into killing his own girlfriend. The Bye Bye Man then taunts Elliot with his intent to kill his family, and ends the movie moving on to another victim.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The bad attempt at making a childish phrase such as "The Bye-Bye Man" creepy has spawned a slew of jokes at its expense. A common meme is to replace the name with another childish phrase, like "The ICUP Man" or "The Pee-Pee Poo-Poo Man".
  • The film's Tagline "Don't think it, don't say it" is also a popular target for mockery in many negative reviews of the film, which usually add "don't watch it". The main phrase also later caught on under the context of everyday objects looking like certain indie game characters, surprisingly.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Bye Bye Man has committed various vile crimes, but tricking Elliot into killing Sasha is probably one of his most hated moves.
• Narm:
  • A flower shop is owned by a Mr. Daisy, who refers to Sasha's roommates as "handsome" while she's asking about the house. This is a horror movie.
  • At one point, there's a really obviously fake sneeze.
  • Elliot convulsing while driving and singing along to "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brothers.
  • Many of the jump scares of the film fall flat due to the lack of genuine tension most audience members feel.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The fact that the killer's name is the Bye Bye Man.
  • The Bye Bye Man's dog (see below).
  • Critics have noted that making the Bye Bye Man The Spook in its purest form diminishes the scare effect as there was nothing for them to take from the Bye Bye Man to be afraid of aside from the Cliché Storm it provides.
  • The Bye Bye Man manifesting is supposed to be the climax and thus the scariest moment of the film. This is heavily undercut by him doing nothing but standing around and pointing at the protagonists.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • It's obvious that the Bye Bye Man's dog is really poor CGI.
  • Faye Dunaway's character burning to death in one of the illusions created by the Bye Bye Man is obviously just her being poorly composited over a shot of fire.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As Chris Stuckmann notes in his review, the film has a somewhat-decent concept which it never fully utilizes to do something new with.
  • There's no explanation for anything about The Bye Bye Man. Instead of making him seem scary or mysterious, this makes him come off as an undercooked and poorly planned character, as the coins, the hound and his motivations make no sense; he seems to do stuff For the Evulz.
  • Elliot raises the possibility that The Bye Bye Man's powers come from the fear and the belief of the people influenced by him, this is given no time to be properly explored at the end of the movie.

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