The Bye Bye Man (2017)

For whatever reason, we have this "premium" cable package, which includes Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, etc.  What I've noticed about these channels is that they all have like half dozen offshoot channels, and for like month, they just play the same half dozen movies interchangeably.  So every time I flipped through, I kept seeing The Bye Bye Man and while that is a pretty dumb name for a movie, obviously I had to watch.

Apparently this is based on a story called "The Bridge to Body Island" about a blind man in New Orleans who murdered people, cut out their eyes and tongue, and brought them to life using voodoo.  That sounds pretty rad to be honest.

The movie opens with a man going on a murder spree in the late 60s, asking each victim if they told anyone else about "the name."  In present day, Elliot, his girlfriend Sasha and friend John move into a rundown house near their college.  Elliot unwittingly sees the name (the bye bye man) carved inside a nightstand and later repeats it in the presence of others.

After that, things begin to quickly go downhill.  Sasha gets sick, and Elliot gets crazy, and poor John is kinda stuck in the middle.   You can avoid all this nonsense by not thinking of the bye bye man or saying his name, but we all know the easiest way to think about something is to know that you shouldn't.  Hallucinations abound, and it's a big mess of who knows, who doesn't know, and who's headed to kill who. But I don't know, it's also kinda fun?  This movie got pretty terrible reviews, but there was something I liked about it, so I'm going to go against the grain and give it a tentative thumbs up.