By I’ve never been the biggest fan of football. When I was growing up, my dad tried desperately to make me care about the game, but it never clicked with me. I was always interested in more creative efforts and saw the sport as a gigantic waste of time, effort, and money. Athletes are paid millions of dollars, fans become obsessed with them to the point where being a fan becomes their sole identity, and as a theater kid, I always resented how the athletics department got a huge budget while the theater department got nothing. I wanted Him to be a takedown of the NFL and the culture that football created.
And can you blame me? Putting my obvious bias aside, there’s a lot of potential for a horror-themed sports movie. Plenty of sports dramas already put a huge focus on the psychological and social effects of professional sports, whether it be the gut-wrenching drama of The Iron Claw or the emotional catharsis of Challengers, so why not turn it into a horror movie? There’s plenty of potential to be mined there, and trailers made Him look at least slightly interesting. After watching it, it’s pretty clear that it’s about as deep as a puddle and just as compelling.
Him
Director: Justin Tipping
Release Date: September 19, 2025 (Theatrical)
Rating: R
As a kid, Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) wants nothing more than to be on the Los Angeles Saviors. It’s the team with his favorite quarterback, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), and following the death of his father, he has a genuine shot of joining the team thanks to years of practice and hard work. However, after an attack that leaves him concussed, it seems like his career is over. Just when all hope seems lost, Cam’s agent, Tom (Tim Heidecker), calls him and lets him know that Isaiah wants him to come to his compound and train with him for a week to see if Cam can handle being Isaiah’s successor. Cam says yes, heads to the compound, and quickly sees that there’s more going on with Isaiah and the Saviors than meets the eye.
It’s a familiar premise, but a solid one. I know that there were musings in the run-up to Him’s release that it was like Black Swan for men, but that isn’t really the case. Honestly, it has more in common with Suspiria and even Opus than Black Swan. We see a young man desperate for validation approach a group that has cult-like tendencies and get in too deep with their bizarre and unsettling culture. It’s just that instead of music, it’s with football.
It’s a fair way to approach the topic. Football is already a very tribalistic sport when compared to games like basketball and baseball, so turning the Saviors into a literal cult is a logical way to examine the sport in a horror film. The Saviors and Isaiah play on Cam’s desire to be the greatest, as we see the lengths he’s willing to go to achieve it. He wants to be a part of the team and is willing to do what he can to ingratiate himself with them, even if it’s at the cost of others suffering. Granted, it never gets too dark, and most of Cam’s loosening morals and ethics don’t really have any lasting repercussions. Plus, that desire to be a part of the team is really only present in one scene. And you know, the more I actually write, the more I realize that Him doesn’t really know what it wants to do with its themes.
Copyright: Universal
Is it a movie criticising our society’s obsession with football? Is it an examination of celebrity culture? Is it a condemnation of toxic masculinity? Is it a movie about cults? The answer is yes to all of them, but it doesn’t do any of those things particularly well. Its use of football-related imagery is fine, and I like how the film briefly, and I do mean briefly, touches on the negative psychological effects of when football is your only defining personality trait. In the few times we see Saviors fans, they’re depicted as lunatics who are willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of the team’s success. Even Cam’s dad idolizes the Saviors, going as far as to have a shrine dedicated to them in his house and telling Cam that Isaiah is a real man for breaking his leg to win a game for his team.
It’s all very extreme, but it lacks any subtlety. Him presents these grand ideas, but doesn’t even realize that everything it’s been saying has been said before and been said better. The only area that it had a leg to stand on – the examination of toxic masculinity – doesn’t even register that much. The Saviors and Isaiah are all portrayed as these macho men who are all too eager to hurt each other to fuel their egos on their rise to the top. Does Him decide to do anything with it? Nope, instead it’s entirely focused on going through the exact same playbook for a horror movie like this. Everything seems fine at first, Cam starts to notice some weird things, there’s a person who tells him to escape while he can, then shit hits the fan, and everything goes belly up. It’s all so very… generic.
A lot has been said about Jordan Peele’s involvement with the film. People are calling it his first misfire and how it ruined his near-perfect track record as a horror director, but he didn’t direct the film. The marketing may make you think he did, but he wasn’t helming the picture. It’s Justin Tipping, who has only directed one other movie before this. He does have a decent career as a television director, but this is his first horror movie, and it shows.
Copyright: Universal
Outside of some pretty striking imagery, like when the camera shows heat signatures and X-rays during its brief bursts of action, there’s not much to really keep viewers engaged with Him. The exception to this is Marlon Wayans, who makes Isaiah feel unpredictable in the best way possible. He frequently shifts through multiple emotions within a single scene, sometimes in a single shot, and you never can quite tell what his endgame is. He seems pleasant at first, and even in later scenes where he’s alone with Cam, it’s clear he doesn’t want Cam to make the same decisions he’s made, only for Isaiah to eventually give in to the ego and fame manufactured for him. It’s honestly a career-best performance, and I have to respect him for taking the negative reviews Him has received with as much grace as he is. Sure, the film isn’t great, but at least Marlon Wayans is.
By the time we reached the climax, I had all but checked out. I gave up on Him trying to tie its disparate themes together into something coherent. Eventually, I just settled on how the only thing it had going for it was its visuals, because nothing else about the ending was giving me any sort of gratification or satisfaction. The last ten minutes should hit harder than they do. It clearly is taking cues from Get Out, but outside of the core relationship between Cam and Isaiah, the ending falls flat. So many revelations are made in rapid succession, but none of them have any time to develop in a natural way. If there had been maybe another half hour to the film’s hour-and-a-half runtime, I probably would have been more invested in the finale, but as it is, all I could do was shrug my shoulders. People were killed, there were a few cool shots, the script bluntly told us the film’s mission statement, and the credits began to roll.
By the time I left the theater, all I could think about was how disappointed I was in Him. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, but I was at the very least expecting a film that could give me some level of entertainment. Marlon Wayans certainly did what he could with what was given to him, but the lifeless script and the amateurish execution simply prevented Him from being the GOAT. Hell, it prevented Him from being middling. It’s not a godawful horror movie, but if I’m allowed to use a football metaphor here, Him is a lot like the New York Giants. They have a lot of potential, but consistently keep making enough bad mistakes that it’s no wonder why people think they suck. They’re not the Browns, but they’re barely holding their head above water.
