Quick Read
- ‘Him’ blends football drama with surreal horror, set in a desert compound.
- Marlon Wayans delivers a powerful performance as Isaiah White.
- Director Justin Tipping prioritizes striking visuals over coherent storytelling.
- Themes of hero worship and moral compromise are explored but remain underdeveloped.
- The film’s narrative becomes increasingly bizarre and incoherent by the final act.
Style Over Substance: A Horror Film That Dazzles and Frustrates
From the very first frame of Him, director Justin Tipping signals he’s here to impress. The camera glides through stark desert landscapes and gleaming locker rooms, each shot saturated with a high-gloss visual sheen. The violence—on and off the football field—is rendered in pulsating, x-ray detail, bones fracturing and organs jarring with every tackle. It’s spectacle, no doubt. But as the 96 minutes tick by, it becomes clear that this film’s greatest trick is its style, not its story.
At the heart of Him is Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a rising college quarterback whose career is nearly derailed by a mysterious attack. He’s invited to the desert compound of his childhood idol, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), the legendary quarterback on the verge of retirement. What promises to be a week of elite training quickly spirals into a fever-dream of psychological and physical torment, overseen by a motley crew that includes a sardonic sports doctor (Jim Jefferies) and a hulking trainer (Maurice Greene).
Marlon Wayans: Acting Against the Grain
Wayans, best known for his comedic roles, throws himself into Isaiah White with a physical and emotional intensity that’s both intimidating and magnetic. He’s not just playing a washed-up athlete—he’s a cult leader in shoulder pads, dispensing cryptic advice and subjecting Cameron to bizarre rituals, including suspicious blood transfusions and brutal training games. The film gives Wayans room to roam, and he seizes it, delivering a performance that anchors the chaos swirling around him.
Yet, for all Wayans’s bravura, the script—credited to Tipping, Skip Bronkie, and Zack Akers—rarely matches his energy. The dialogue is littered with ominous hints and obvious red flags, telegraphing every twist long before it lands. Cameron’s journey, meant to blur the line between reality and hallucination, instead feels like a straight shot through genre clichés. The audience is always one step ahead, waiting for the film to catch up.
Football as Cult: Fame, Sacrifice, and the Horror Within
Where Him tries to dig deeper is in its critique of hero worship and the moral compromises demanded by fame. The compound’s rituals—phones confiscated, blood swapped, pain ritualized—draw unsettling parallels between sports fandom and cult psychology. Here, football isn’t just a game; it’s a religion, and Isaiah White is its high priest, demanding devotion and sacrifice. The film’s anger at the violence and exploitation at the heart of professional sports is palpable, but its messaging is often blunt, more shouted than shown.
There are moments when Him hints at something richer. The tension between Cameron’s ambition and his physical vulnerability, the surreal reenactment of “The Last Supper,” and the grotesque, almost satirical depiction of training all point to a film that wants to say something about the cost of greatness. But as the final act descends into baroque gore and narrative incoherence, those threads unravel.
Visuals That Haunt, Characters That Drift
Tipping’s visual choices are bold, sometimes breathtaking. Scenes alternate between hallucinatory set pieces and brutal realism, with Bobby Krlic’s (The Haxan Cloak) score heightening the sense of unease. The football sequences, shot with kinetic energy and x-ray effects, linger in the mind long after the credits roll.
Yet the characters—outside of Wayans’s Isaiah—rarely come alive. Cameron, played with earnestness by Withers, is reactive rather than proactive, his journey less a transformation than a series of trials. Julia Fox, as White’s influencer spouse, adds strangeness but little substance, and the supporting cast often feels like set dressing for the film’s visual pyrotechnics.
Surreal Horror or Missed Opportunity?
Produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, Him arrives with the promise of genre innovation. Peele’s own films have set a high bar for blending social commentary with horror, but here, the elements never quite coalesce. The story, plucked from the Black List of acclaimed unproduced scripts, starts with real promise—a fresh angle on sports and horror, a chance to explore the toxic underside of hero worship—but loses its footing amid escalating weirdness.
By the time the third act explodes in violence and surreal spectacle, the audience is left with more questions than chills. Is this a story about the price of ambition? A satire of the sports-industrial complex? Or simply a gonzo riff on cult horror tropes? The film gestures toward all these ideas but settles for none, leaving viewers stranded in its stylistic maze.
In the end, Him is a film that looks amazing and feels empty. It’s a dazzling high-budget student film, packed with technique but starved of narrative payoff. The football horror premise is ripe for exploration, but here, it’s fumbled—style trumps substance, and the emotional core never quite finds the end zone.
Assessment: For all its ambition and visual bravura, ‘Him’ is a cautionary tale about the perils of prioritizing style over story. Marlon Wayans’s performance is a revelation, but the film’s lack of narrative cohesion and character depth prevents it from achieving true genre greatness. Horror and sports fans alike may find themselves admiring the spectacle but yearning for something more substantial beneath the surface.
Citations: TheWrap, Hollywood Reporter, Vulture