This Friday isn’t just any day.  To horror fans this is a perennial holiday, being that it is Friday the 13th.  This particular Friday is even more auspicious as a brand new horror film The Bye Bye Man will be hitting theaters and spreading a new type of psychological fear. The new thriller directed by Academy Award Nominated filmmaker Stacy Title, written by horror guru Jonathan Penner, and produced by Trevor Macy. The film spins a mysterious tale of an urban legend who is attracted to his victims the second they think of him or say his name.

People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the cause of all evil is not a matter of what…but who? 

From the producer of Oculus and The Strangers comes The Bye Bye Man, a chilling horror-thriller that exposes the evil behind the most unspeakable acts committed by man. When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there is only one way to avoid his curse: don’t think it, don’t say it. But once the Bye Bye Man gets inside your head, he takes control. Is there a way to survive his possession?

HorrorBuzz had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Stacy Title along with her longtime friend and producer Trevor Macy. We wanted to how the story of The Bye Bye Man evolved from short ghost story to featured film. We also wanted to know what made Title and Macy tick. Why horror? What compelled them to make the movie?

As the interview began Title and Macy greeted us with warm handshakes and a warm, friendly demeanor. With only ten minutes we jumped right into it…

HorrorBuzz: How did you get into filmmaking

Stacy Title: I made movies as a kid. I had several cameras because my dad was a commercial producer. I shot, like, flowers and bugs and time lapse and all kinds of crazy stuff but storytelling was something I was always interested in.  When I was in college I wrote screenplays, but then I made a short film and got an Oscar Nomination for it and it launched me.

HB: You moved on to journalism, then TV, but what brought you back to creating a horror film?

ST: Well I had always been a horror fan but I got a taste of it when I was a kid. Growing up I had about 4 or 5 movie theaters nearby and I would go by myself  and convince people to buy me tickets to R Rated movies and…

Trevor Macy: Ha! I didn’t know that but that does not surprise me.

ST: Yeah, I was really good at it. I would tell my parents that I was going to a friend’s house and I would go to the movies, then my friend’s house then go home and my parents never even knew.

HB: Did you go at night?

ST: Yeah, I’d go in the evening. Back in those days you could go out at night and not get abducted. So in terms of horror it was just for me… I love intense stories. I love transgressive things. One day, Trevor brought this story to me because he believes in me as a filmmaker and I loved it.

HB: Trevor, how did you find this script?

TM: I actually came across the short story that the movie is based on, I would say, almost seven years ago. It took a couple twists and turns as these things do and then it was about four years ago that, the decks were clear and I asked Stacy and her husband Jonathan to come on. We actually met attempting to do a Stephen King movie back at the turn of the century but that didn’t pan out. 

ST: We actually met at Propaganda.

TM: Yes, Propaganda, and she had been off working in TV for a bit and raising two excellent children. I thought they would have a unique take on this. I really care about horror in which the scares land because you care about the characters and she shares that point of view. So we spent a few years developing the idea from the short story because the story itself is so compelling. 

It’s ostensibly based on true events, that’s what the author said.

HB: It’s a pretty short story right?

ST: What is it, twelve pages?

TM: It couldn’t be more than twenty. But the idea that there is this heavy that is summoned the minute you think his name or say it, it acts like a beacon and he can see and pervert your biggest insecurities. We worked hard to make the script live up to that concept. Then after that all came together.

ST: It was neat. We looked at other genres but we always ended up back on this. My husband, who wrote the script for The Bye Bye Man, also wrote the Taschen book on horror and really knows in a mechanical fanboy way, I mean I am a fan girl, but I don’t even dust his boots. He knows everything about everything when it comes to horror. And it’s funny. I hear everyone saying ‘Oh it’s like Freddy’, ‘it’s like Jason’ but you know, it’s not.

HB: Okay, what makes The Bye Bye Man original?

ST: Because he is a psychological threat.

HB: How so?

ST: He doesn’t need a knife to hurt you, he doesn’t even need to be near you to hurt you because he’s telepathic.  You think about him and he feels that and he comes for you. He gets closer and closer and closer and closer. You start to hear coins dropping, you begin to hear trains. You start to think you see him. You are trying to get him out of your head and you can’t. You start hallucinating, losing track of time, going in and out of consciousness but you come back and you see things that you believe. It’s very grounded. It comes out of reality so it’s very scary.

TM: The only weapon he needs is you.

ST: Right so he gets you to hallucinate, gets closer and closer. The other thing is that he knows what terrifies you he knows what makes you anxious and he uses that specifically to play with you and to manipulate you like a puppet and he can make you do whatever he wants. Once he gets your mind, it’s very hard to get it back from him.

TM: Yeah I don’t think you’ve ever seen something like that before.

HB: You have seen villains that make you paranoid.

TM: Right and we have seen villains that punish you for doing something bad.

ST: You know, there is a Ring, viral aspect to it. Tony Todd as the Candyman has a temporal way of moving, but we haven’t seen something like that in a while. But there’s not a person that can get into your psyche and make you see and do terrible things.

TM: We owe a lot to some amazing horror icons, but this is definitely, I think this is a fresh cocktail.

HB: Any horror film as an influence if you are being honest. But what horror films influence you?

ST: The one that affected me, one of the ones I snuck into was, um , Silent Scream. hat was really F’n scary. My friend Sherri and I, we rode our bikes and we got it. I ‘m trying to remember what movie we bought tickets to see so we could sneak in. Barbara Steele, I finally got to meet her, what a delight. she is amazing. But oh my god. In that movie, she scared the hell out of me! You know, in that movie the family is holding people down and she dresses up her victims and talks to them, and it’s so transgressive, so creepy. I got really scared in that movie.

After that my friend and I went out for coffee, well, not coffee, we went to what was it, IHOP, and they had those great big pitchers of coffee on the table and, you know, I drank the whole thing! And I’d never had coffee before I was like an amphetamine addict. We drove, we rode back home and I fell asleep. but in the middle of the night I suddenly woke up and she (Barbara Steele) was in my room. She was totally in my room and I ran upstairs and woke up my parents and they were so mad. My dad was like, ‘You’re on drugs!’ and I’m like ‘I’m NOT!’

HB: But did you tell him you saw…

ST: NO! I couldn’t tell him I was sneaking into R movies they would have been pissed at me, riding my bike around, sneaking into movies.

TM: I think that’s better than being on drugs.

ST: Well I mean I was on coffee and Barbara Steele.

HB: And it was in your head, just like The Bye Bye Man.

ST: Exactly. Oh then Repulsion, I watched that with my husband and you know I was like halfway through the movie and all ‘Yeah, ok.’ then there’s that shot of the rapist in the mirror. Wow. There’s a quote of that in the movie. There are a couple of quotations and I could go through it but I don’t want to bore you.

TM: Well the first horror movie that I saw was Creature From The Black Lagoon that I made my mother sit and watch with me on TV when I was in the second grade.

ST: Oh my god!

TM: And my mom would ask, “Why don’t you stop watching this? I’m gonna go in the kitchen.” and I would be like, “NO, no no! you have to stay here!” 

HB: What was it about that monster that you connected with?

TM: Well, let’s put aside the fact that it was a low bar because I was eight years old, but I was thinking, “My god! These people aren’t doing anything wrong.” and “What is this horrible thing?” Those were the gateway drugs for me. The sci-fi horror like The Thing and Alien I like, I saw those before I saw Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. I think that my favorite scary movie is The Thing.

HB: Which one?

TM: Which one? What do you mean which one? I mean I suppose you could make a case for the original but…

ST: And we should also mention the movies like Cronenberg with all the body horror, The brood, Dead Ringers, The Fly, those ones are very effective for me.

HB: What scares you?

ST: What scares me are catastrophic things and I don’t mean nature. I mean going out into the world and not knowing what’s out there. You know? Sending my two children, when they’re driving, going out to parties. That scares me and that’s what The Bye Bye Man does. He uses those pieces of your lowlife to scare you.

TM: I guess the easy answer, you could say I’m afraid of falling. But I was just thinking.  If you look at all of the horror movies that I’ve been involved with, they are all about the loss of family relationships and children.

ST: Yeah and that’s a profound thing.

With that I was signaled that my time was up and I was whisked away to the holding area. That wasn’t before Title and Macy graciously thanked me for coming by. What stuck with me is that these people really know horror. They seem to get what makes something work. We are definitely looking forward to checking the movie out when it opens nationwide this Friday!