‘Him’ Review: This Football Focused Horror Film Fails to Reach the End Zone
It’s always been interesting to see the lack of sports-centric horror films within the genre. Sure, we have some films with inklings of ideas, but in most cases, basketball or football stories within films never really reside in the horror space. With this in mind, a genre pic like Him is a breath of fresh air at first glance. The Justin Tipping-directed film, centered on the pressures of fame and pushing one’s body to the limit in the world of modern sports culture, has considerable potential. Still, a large portion of it is squandered in what ends up being one of the biggest disappointments of the year thus far.
Him is an utter mess of a film that loses its way throughout its runtime, leaving you more baffled by its end result of being simultaneously incoherent and woefully generic. Any moment the film dips its toes into the thematic elements of toxic masculinity or the toll on athletes within these sports, but it always goes unexplored and into extremely blunt territories.
While the film has a fair amount of striking visuals and a standout unhinged supporting performance from Marlon Wayans, it can’t help but get bogged down by its overall vague ambitions.
What’s Him (2025) about?
Him’s story centers around the apparent football prodigy Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a young up-and-coming player looking for his time to shine within professional football. However, after suffering from a near career-ending brain injury from an attack on the football field, Cameron wonders if he’ll ever truly reach the status of the late greats.
Soon after these events, Cameron learns from his agent that he’s been given a lifetime to train in an isolated compound under the mentorship of the San Antonio Savior’s quarterback legend, Isaiah White (Wayans), who has built an entire dynasty virtually on his own. Cameron has been looking forward to a moment like this for his entire life, especially since Isaiah has been an idol to him since a very young age. But he comes to realize the fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be as Isaiah starts to reveal the sinister truth of what lies beneath his football empire.
Him is all style and no substance
Him isn’t short on the flashy or kooky imagery that can be found in a lot of modern horror films. Still, any potential meaning behind an interesting voice behind the camera is lost due to the film’s constant need to one-up itself.
One of the most shocking aspects of the film is just how poorly executed the scares themselves are. Whether it’s the constant usage of exoskeleton shots within sequences, or flashy cuts hinting at the sinister turn we all know is coming, there’s some potential but absolutely no meaning behind how any scare is timed or placed within the frame; almost like the film is first feature territory.
Similar criticisms can be made about the film’s theme and narrative, which are both as thick as a blank sheet of paper. If the film isn’t just parading around its very blatant concepts about the pressure of modern athletes putting their bodies on the line and football being like a religion within America, it just leans back on the now tired structure of a film like producer Jordan Peele’s Get Out. A person goes to an off-grid location where they meet an idol or a new family member of some kind, only to realize darker things are taking place there than they once thought before, except in this case, it’s related to football.
The movie’s structure honestly has a lot more in common with this year’s Opus than one would think, a vapid and airless thematic presence that can’t even manage to have any remotely eerie or humorous moments.
All of these issues ultimately culminate in an absolutely absurd climax, where the film’s mystery is finally revealed, and everything goes off the rails, and we’re left with more questions on dangling plot threads than answers. The film yet again fails to provide any real entertainment value, but it repeats the central flaw of showcasing something interesting that ends up as a hollow spectacle and provides no true meaning to anything on screen.
The one saving grace here is the performances. Despite the screenplay giving him little to work with, Tyriq Withers is a solid enough lead throughout, giving his best emotions to scenes that would be even more blank without him. But it’s really Wayans and Julia Fox that are the cast standouts here as husband and wife. Both of them are the most in tune with the movie’s wavelength and often give a silly and campy vibe that the film needed more of, but unfortunately, none of them can save such a weightless endeavor.
Final thoughts on Justin Tipping’s Him
Him truly is a frustrating film to witness because the potential of a neat little horror film that we rarely see radiates off certain moments, but the final product we get couldn’t be more prodigiously empty. A few solid performances aren’t able to save such a thematically shallow and weightless snoozefest on the whole.
Not only does Him’s wasted potential make it just straight up bad, but it also cements it as one of the year’s most disappointing films, completely fumbling the ball so close to a touchdown.
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