“Don’t be a mascot.”
For much of the runtime, Justin Tipping’s Him telegraphs its intentions so clearly that the movie might as well have runway lights. However, the movie pulls an abrupt turn in the final moments and goes for the least expected landing imaginable, an honorable ending. Ostensibly about ambition, the sunsetting of athletic glory and the dawning of a new star’s day, Him veers into corrupted sports, toxic masculinity and cosmic horror. Him lies in the center of a fascinating Venn diagram of films like Nicolas Refn’s 2016’s The Neon Demon and Ari Aster’s 2018 horror masterpiece Hereditary as well as the seminal 1962 Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man. Visually innovative, conceptually sound but fumbling slightly with a heavy-handed approach, Him wants to change the way you watch football.
Him is a 2025 Universal Pictures feature directed by Justin Tipping from a story by Tipping, Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie. Star Marlon Wayans leads a cast featuring Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Jim Jefferies, Tim Heidecker, Don Benjamin, Norman Towns and others.
“I can see how, to a normal person, this would be off-putting.”
About to embark for his NFL Combine, college prodigy Cameron Cade (Withers) is blindsided by a man dressed like the horned mascot for the San Antonio Saviors, who smashes the young quarterback’s skull in with a warhammer.
Severely concussed, Cade gets his head stapled back together and is waned that without time to heal, his TBI will worsen and could prove fatal. He is in pain; hallucinating but aware enough to listen to his body. Though he is pushed by his brother Willis (Towns), who wants to enjoy the ride on Cade’s roller-coaster to stardom, Cade pulls the plug and the window closes on his Combine opportunity.
Seeing his ambitions begin to slip away like sand through his fingertips, he struggles with his decision and his lot in life without the relentless draw of football. Listless and adrift, he kills time with Willis at drug-fueled parties when a call comes in from his agent, offering Cade the opportunity of the ages; Eight-time NFL champion, Saviors quarterback Isaiah White (Wayans) wants to invite Cade to his estate for a private evaluation that will determine whether the Saviors will make him an offer. Cade agrees and heads to White’s mansion.
Cam enters this lair to the beat of a taxidermy hammer. There he meets Isaiah and his wife, influencer Elsie (Fox) as well as his staff led by White’s trainer (Jefferies). They get straight to work and Isaiah swiftly pushes the concussed Cam to his limits. Though perfectly polite, he puts Cam through a grueling workout.
Recuperating in the treatment room, Cade is distracted when he sees White bagging units of his “highly oxygenated” blood “for later” and the Trainer quickly injects him with what he insists is an enhancement serum designed to accelerate Cam’s healing. In the days that follow, Cade can’t tell if he’s crossed over the Rubicon, crossed through the Looking Glass or crossed into the void.
What keeps Isaiah motivated after eight championships? Why is he taking the time to mentor someone who might eclipse him someday? Are there sinister forces arrayed against Cam, hoping to prevent that potential from proving true? Can Cam survive until he signs his contract with the Saviors? Please see Him to find out.
“Turns out, human skulls aren’t meant to smash into each other.”
(spoilers for Him to follow)
Him introduces an interesting visual technique that feels like it’s out of a video game, taking transparencies to new levels, allowing audiences to see through the flesh to the organs beneath. It pops up in the intense action sequences to obscure the gore by ironically going beneath to the bones below as well as to keep the audience appraised as to the progress of Cade’s fractured skull.
There are a few neat ideas percolating in Him’s pot of coffee pertaining to the abandoning of ambition, mortality and exploitation, but it’s a very shallow dive to get where they’re going. That Him wants to talk about these things in the shadow of ancient beings rigging the NFL is an interesting choice.
Only the barest hint of any lore and mythology of this football Blood-God is, er, rendered. In perhaps the most important scene in the movie, the scene explaining the axis Him revolves around, the script hits first-draft territory. White describes his prowess and longevity as a result of an ageless, eldritch being either possessing bodies or possessing blood for centuries down to the last two holders of the GOAT title in the NFL, the last taking White under his wing, just as Isaiah is preparing Cam.
They don’t even give the guy a name! If ever a scene needed the “I’m not the Dread Pirate Roberts” speech from the 1987 Rob Reiner film, The Princess Bride, it’s this one.
To review: Wesley is explaining to Princess Buttercup how he came to be the Man in Black, that he was brought into the Captain’s cabin by the man he thought was the fearsome freebooter. The man told Wesley, “I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts. My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.’”
Throwaway lines, to be sure, silly throwaway lines, but lines with meat on them.
instead, the writers of Him half-ass it like Biff Tannen from 1985’s Back to the Future, who knows he can get copies of hapless George McFly’s homework with bullying. Maybe they were going to come back to it later. It’s emblematic of the movie’s issues in general. The internal logic of Him is highly illogical (can you have several “greatest of all time” without not understanding what “greatest” and “all time” mean).
There are superficial plot and significant aesthetic similarities with The Neon Demon, starring Elle Fanning. Isaiah’s house is like a vast, ominous hobbit hole, dug into the desiccated desert hills, full of round doors and dark, twisting halls. White’s eerie home would not be out of place in Nicolas Refn’s film.
The Nietzschean canard, “You gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” gets a workout a few times with the replicated use of a jump scare where something is in the dark that shouldn’t be. Like in other scenes, Him doesn’t do the legwork here either. The scenes need more time in the oven. Tipping lacks a little patience and the frights don’t have the bite that they could.
Cade’s daily progress at White’s abode is marked by chapters bearing title cards: Fun, Poise, Resilience, Vision and Sacrifice. It is uncertain as to whether they do anything to enhance the picture other than project its ultimate (non) destination, setting up the clever switcheroo, fake-out ending.
From a conceptual sense, the oft-repeated refrain, “Real men make sacrifices” becomes the Him’s version of “How to Serve Man” from the Kanamit cookbook, as it slowly dawns upon Cade, too, that he’s not making the sacrifice, he is the sacrifice.
The film is permeated with religious symbiology. White’s gym is his corrupted Church and Cam is the next conversion to Isaiah’s blasphemy. Isaiah is grooming him to be a dark oblation. Cade is an angelic upstart entering the decadent den of the jaded. Direct and indirect Christ-like allusions pile on until the Last Supper is literally referenced on screen and Cam tries to do the right thing.
The swelling, existential, Lovecraftian dread that has been steadily growing from the opening reel takes a backseat to an unabashedly uncynical, atonal ending that is the only real surprise Him has to offer. It’s a big swing for the bleachers. The gore and arterial spray works, the sexist slapstick comedy doesn’t. Unfortunately, like in Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate, the film closes with an “and then what?” moment that’s far more dismal and with dire repercussions coming for Cade due to his choices made in the final moments.
Him is in theatres Friday, 9/19/2025.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher