Jared Mobarak

Sadly The Bye Bye Man lacks both surprise and intrigue despite possessing some promise via a wild opening.

Credit is due to Marson for staying objective in how she tells Hurwitz’s story so it can transcend his individual experience within this complicated landscape.

Thankfully Bousman’s endgame does deliver the supernatural slaughterhouse of the title to great effect with inspired spectral victims looped in suspended animation. It’s so memorably jarring that you wonder if the whole was just sloppily reverse engineered from this massive undertaking.

Besides an unnecessarily indulgent epilogue, the film’s good versus evil dynamic is successful at extricating itself from any mainstream trappings while also nicely serving its audience.

All mood, atmosphere, and mystery with our own confusion about the action mirrored in those onscreen.

Atmosphere is paramount as it should be, but sadly it’s created almost solely from jump scares the prologue quickly numbs us towards as soon as things get going.

Maybe Fenn’s treasure will one day change someone’s life in a material way. Maybe it won’t. In the meantime, though, it’s calling us to awaken and explore.

The biggest draw is watching Cage embrace a character with the unironic comedic flair we haven’t seen from him in quite some time, but it only works effectively if he’s able to balance the realization that Gary Faulkner isn’t a joke.

If anything it simply reminds us of his onscreen charisma and endearing humor, his handle of Hughes’ descent into eccentricity and insanity proving memorably entertaining. While he’s not the lead, he is the glue.

The end result isn’t bad; its potential merely creates disappointment.

Writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining‘s adaptation of Jessica Schiefuer‘s 2011 August Prize-winning (Sweden) young adult novel Pojkarna (translated as The Boys but changed to Girls Lost for international release) is deliciously dark and profoundly vital.

It’s a captivating experience with wonderful displays of heart and humor, but I must question some of its execution.

While the movie provides common sense scenarios, its success lies in putting faces to the issue. It highlights heroes and villains to transform abstract numbers into human beings. That power trumps any lack of cinematic brilliance because this type of documentary seeks exposure and potential hope.