‘Him’ review: American football goes psychological horror

As a writer and director, Jordan Peele has brought us the gnarly thrills of Get Out, Us, and Nope. As a producer, he’s been busy expanding Black horror by uplifting other filmmakers, like Nia DaCosta (Candyman), J.D. Dillard (The Twilight Zone reboot), and now Justin Tipping, co-writer and director of Him. 

The upside of Peele’s involvement is tying these rising filmmakers to an established brand of blockbuster horror and Black excellence. The downside, however, is that fans and critics may not be as welcoming to visions of horror that don’t mimic Peele’s signature scares. Critics were tough on Candyman and The Twilight Zone. So what will that mean for Him?

On Tipping’s side are two incredible leading men. Marlon Wayans, in an off-brand dramatic turn, and Tyriq Withers are a sensational team, reflecting perhaps their own places in the movie industry. 

The former plays a charismatic, established football star who has grown weary of the pressures of fame and the abuse perpetrated by the sport on his body, not to mention the even darker underbelly of sacrifices he cannot talk about. The latter plays the ambitious, talented, but naive rookie who’s unaware of what football will truly demand from his body, mind, and soul. 

The resulting film, while uneven, is rich because of these two performances, colliding with Tipping’s giallo-inspired vision of American football. But is this film overall a win? 

Him plays like Suspiria meets the NFL draft. 

For legal reasons, the script by Tipping, Zack Akers, and Skip Bronkie won’t use familiar team names or other NFL-affiliated brands, including the actual moniker of the annual “big game.” But Him doesn’t need that. 

Centered on a team called the Saviors, Him instead focuses on the training required to become the GOAT (greatest of all time). Former college footballer turned actor Tyriq Withers stars as draft hopeful Cameron Cade. Ever since his boyhood, Cam’s father pointed him to Black excellence in the field of football, telling him, “That’s what real men do. They sacrifice. No guts, no glory.” 

Cam is a college quarterback hoping to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Saviors’ MVP Isaiah White (Wayans). Fourteen years after what should have been a career-ending injury on the field, White is finally eying retirement. But first, he takes Cam under his wing to see if the young man is ready to be “Him,” meaning the next big thing for the Saviors’ brand. However, Isaiah’s training is unconventional, demanding Cam surrender his phone and submit to a regimen held mostly in a bizarre underground bunker, deep in a scorching desert. 

Like the aspiring ballerinas of the horror classic Suspiria,who are also trapped in a sketchy training facility, he’s initially so driven to do right by his teacher that he’ll do anything he’s asked. This begins with tests of his obedience that begin with humiliation, then quickly graduate to endurance and violence. As his body is pushed to its limits, his mind quakes with horrific visions. Are they hallucinations caused by a concussion? Or scarier yet, are they real? And either way, what do they mean for Cam?

Him brews solid suspense and surreal scares. 

Credit: Parrish Lewis / Universal Pictures

Tipping reimagines the iconography of American football in some sensationally scary sequences. For instance, a mascot, tall, masked, and wielding a weapon emerges in a jump scare and acts like a slasher, assaulting an unwitting footballer. Throughout Cam’s journey, mascots will emerge in costumes fluffy, glittery, and yet alien and disturbing. There’s a sense that they’re hiding something sinister beneath their too-broad grins and fluttering limbs.  

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Fans get a similarly transformation. Their excited cheers turn into echoing, haunting yowls. Their fervor for Isaiah turns against any who might threaten his going for another win. Specifically, as Cam reaches the gates of the desert compound, his conveyance is ambushed by Marjorie (a truly creepy Naomi Grossman), whose long blonde hair and make-up seem ruined by years of sweat, tears, and obsession. She spits threateningly at Cam’s car and glares at him as if an animal rages inside her. At her sides are two figures covered in white body paint. But instead of resembling the beer-bellied bros of Sunday night football, they have more in common with the skinny, ash-covered acolytes of Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Immortan Joe, their faces covered in strange football-shaped masks, goons to a cult.

As hinted by the team name Saviors, football is their faith, the quarterback their God. Tipping will push this point with more Christian iconography, like the gold cross around Cam’s neck, the recreation of The Last Supper at a pivotal point in his training, and the offering of a grail that might be filled with red wine or sacrificial blood. Isaiah ties the idea of football and its demanded sacrifices of blood and body to gladiators in ancient Rome, though considering the film’s third act reveals, there are historical references closer to home that might have been more effective. 

Tipping is at his best when using smothering swaths of blood red light, flashing effects, and X-ray filters to disorient the standard vision of football, its play, training, and medicines. While Wayans bellows in mercurial moments, Withers is the audience conduit, alternately charmed and alarmed by this icon. Their chemistry, a dizzying mix of mutual admiration and toxic jealousy, makes Him steadily compelling as it tackles sequences of psychological horror and violence. But frustratingly…

Him fumbles its climax. 

Credit: Universal Pictures

For much of the movie, Tipping plays with what’s real. The horrors playing out onscreen could be visions from Cam’s brain trauma, acting out his anxieties of fame and fans, or they could reflect the horrid extremes football obsessives might reach in pursuit of that exultant win. Such a setup certainly demands a violent finale. And yet, the one that Him offers feels lifted from another film.

After so much stylish and nightmarish suspense, the big showdown between Cam and Isaiah is confoundingly simple in its staging and infuriatingly anti-climactic. From there, the film pitches into a totally different look, taking its hero outside of the oppressive interiors of the compound to a brightly lit day with a sloppily introduced array of antagonists.

The violence that follows is splashy in a mainstream horror way, but cut together so slapdash it feels like an afterthought. It left me curious if Universal panicked and demanded a new ending with too little notice, because as it is, Him‘s climax feels jarringly disjointed from too much of what came before. Unanswered questions, curious characters, and even a seeming murder are left not only dangling, but utterly forgotten in place of a conclusion that only raises new queries, offering no satisfaction.

Julia Fox is utterly bizarre and diabolical. 

Credit: Universal Pictures

Where Wayans and Withers ground Him in a world of challenging masculinity, Fox represents something else entirely. Her hair bleached pale blonde — eyebrows and all — she plays Isaiah’s ostentatious wife Elsie White, a lifestyle influencer. In a whirlwind of an entrance, she welcomes Cam, declares the value of jade yoni eggs for “pussy” health, then hands him the male equivalent. “Put it up your butthole,” she declares, before disappearing down a dark corridor, all while screaming at her assistant Taylor (a spunky Kiara Gomez Glad Bak). 

In the austere masculinity of this training compound, Elsie is a vision of femininity, sex, fashion, fame, and white privilege. She parrots the talk of sacrifice while dressed like a sultry disco ball and prattling on about the privacy required for the ultra-rich. Within this, she is outrageous comic relief, but also underscoring the film’s message about race, its barriers and advantages within the media and sports. In Him, she is a siren and a spectacular scene-stealer. Even in a third act that’s steadily falling apart with a barrage of shocks and assaults, Fox is mesmerizing.

In the end, Him is a mixed bag, offering rich performances, unnerving scares — especially one involving a sauna — and food for thought in terms of sport, race, religion, and masculinity. But perhaps with Him, Tipping, who’s helmed episodes of sensational TV shows like The Chi and Dear White People as well as the calamitous true crime comedy series Joe vs. Carole, bit off more than he could chew.

Something ambiguous in the conclusion could have paid off, perhaps if Him stayed with the play of surreal suspense it had been running. But in its final minutes, Tipping’s tale pivots to something more concrete, gorier, and less daring. That ending, though twisted and thrilling, doesn’t feel earned. So, in the end, Him falls short of astounding. 

Him opens in theaters Sept. 19.