Review: Him

Somewhere, deep in a desert compound lit entirely like a Hellraiser nightclub, the future of American football is being decided by a cult and a man in a fur pelt hammering nails into rawhide. If that sounds ominous, it is. If it sounds silly, it’s that too. Him is a movie that desperately wants to be the Hereditary of sports horror, but ends up more like The Blind Side meets The Devil's Advocate by way of a Gatorade commercial. And none of those comparisons are flattering. In Justin Tipping’s Him, football isn’t just a game. It’s religion. It’s politics. It’s myth. And unfortunately, it’s boring.

We begin with young Cameron Cade, played by a dull Tyriq Withers, who carries both a cross around his neck and the hopes of a family obsessed with the San Antonio Saviors, a fictional USFF team where quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) reigns as a kind of gridiron messiah. After Isaiah wins a game and snaps his leg like a Slim Jim, Cam’s father lovingly makes his son stare at the televised injury as a lesson in the gospel of sacrifice. Victory, after all, comes with a cost. It’s a compelling scene, but it sets the tone for a film that takes itself way too seriously and delivers far too little.

Years later, Cam is college football’s golden boy and a shoo-in for the number one draft pick, until he gets attacked by a man in what looks like a cursed high school mascot costume, aka the pom-pom monster. Concussed, Cam is invited to Isaiah White’s remote training compound to prepare for his pro debut. All he has to do is drive into the middle of nowhere, hand over his cell phone, and ignore the obvious cult outside the gates and the even more obvious red flags inside them.

Him is what’s known as a “spider web” movie: the protagonist is the fly, the situation is clearly the trap, and the only surprise is how long it takes the fly to realize they’re screwed. The audience, of course, knew from the trailer.

That’s the cardinal sin of Him: it plays like it has secrets, but it doesn’t. It holds its cards close to the chest, but the chest is transparent and we already saw the deck. Marlon Wayans, playing Isaiah, is a stretch for him but too often feels like a strain. Every monologue feels like he’s gunning for that long-overdue serious actor moment, but the script traps him in a loop of vague cult-speak, hollow bravado, and zero surprise. One minute he’s a motivational guru; the next, he’s threateningly dissecting a pig carcass like it’s a Tuesday hobby. And not once does the movie pretend he’s not the villain.

The film is more interested in vibes than substance. Director Justin Tipping delivers a polished surface, Kira Kelly’s cinematography makes everything look like a Nike ad shot in purgatory, and the X-ray “Mortal Kombat” kills are inventive in a “try-hard” sort of way, but the style doesn’t cover the cracks. For a movie about football, Him seems terrified of engaging with what football actually means. Yes, it gestures toward themes: the brutality of hero worship, the damage of chasing glory, the rot beneath sports celebrity. But it never examines any of them long enough to matter.

It doesn’t help that the plot is so repetitive. Cam walks down a hall. He sees something weird like an ominous football spinning towards him. He asks questions. He’s told not to ask questions. Repeat. By the time the actual horror arrives, and yes, there is horror, eventually, the film has burned through so many ominous hallway walks, syringe stabbings, and dramatic choral music swells that it feels like an obligation rather than a payoff.

There’s a version of Him that could have worked: a lean, nightmarish satire of sports culture, masculinity, and the corrupting nature of hero worship. But instead of leaning into its absurdities or mining tension from Cam’s very real injury and paranoia, the film plays everything at one droning pitch. Even Julia Fox, in a brief but lively role as Isaiah’s trophy wife, seems like she wandered in from a better movie where people are allowed to have fun.

And then there’s the Jordan Peele factor. As a producer, Peele’s name carries weight, but Him doesn’t even approach the clever social commentary or razor-wire tension of his directorial efforts. Instead, it feels like a hollow impression of one, cobbled together from ideas about religion, sports, and sacrifice that never form into a thesis. Or even a coherent sentence.

By the time Him lurches into its final act, with a twist that plays less like a revelation and more like a studio-mandated homage to better movies, any energy it had has long since drained. There’s no shock. No catharsis. Just a sense of missed opportunity and the realization that what looked like a smart, stylish genre piece is really just a long, slow handoff to nowhere.

Hey fam, for a film about football, Him sure punts on the big ideas.

1.5/5