HIM: A Flawed but Intriguing horror debut

Let’s begin with a rhetorical question. If a movie is about a subject, must that movie be accurate in its portrayal? I would normally say yes; if a movie is about addiction and features qualities and details that are inaccurate to that experience, it feels jarring. It’s the same with a character’s mindset (consider grief) or job (would an oceanic scientist really say that?). The incorrect details create a fissure in the viewer’s mind, casting doubt on the competence of the storyteller. If we are to look at Him, a story about a rising star football player that does not feature a single scene of football onscreen, one could assume that’s where this review is going. 

And yet…

Him follows Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a generational talent in college football who is so unbelievably hyped up by the entire sports-watching community that even before the NFL combine, he is expected to easily become one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. While practicing at night, he’s attacked by a mascot and suffers a near-career ending concussion that leaves him too fragile physically and emotionally to compete in the combine. “Luckily” for him, his agent (Tim Heidecker) gets him a personal tryout with Cam’s hero Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) for his team, the San Antonio Saviors, so long as he can make it through a one-week training camp.

Naturally there’s some spooky stuff happening at Isaiah’s training camp, which looks more like a modernist museum and cult compound than any NFL training center. It’s not the only incongruity in the film—ostensibly Isaiah’s compound is just outside of San Antonio despite the filming location being so visibly Albuquerque, New Mexico that I didn’t even need to double-check that fact. References are made to Cameron’s unmatched skill, but the details are vague throughout: is he a power player quarterback who can’t be brought down? A Michael Vick-esque triple threat able to run the ball himself while delivering long passes with perfect accuracy? A playmaker with wide vision and deadly pass placement? We’re never told. He’s simply on track to being the G.O.A.T. (nearly the title of the film, which will likely come as no surprise to anyone.)

This all sounds pretty negative. After all, we need to trust that a storyteller is eliding these details on purpose, that there is a greater force at work behind the scenes. We need to trust, to put it bluntly, that the filmmakers are not idiots who didn’t bother to do any research before writing. I do not think director Justin Tipping, his co-writers Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie, or producer Jordan Peele are idiots. Beyond whatever constraints may have affected what’s shown on screen or filming locations used, what is left in Him is an intriguing emptiness.

What does football mean when you remove the players from the game? What cult is Isaiah really representing when a late scene featuring his backers takes place in a high school auditorium? What, exactly, is Cam chasing beyond an empty glory? These masculine rituals of dominance and control, and violent physical forces colliding feel even emptier, the rise to the top even more pointless. What’s left in the film is the individual: Cam’s need for a father figure found in his childhood icon.

And in that relationship, the film decidedly delivers. Wayans is known to most audiences for his comedy work in the Scary Movie franchise or films like White Chicks and Dungeons and Dragons, but he easily slips into cult leader/G.O.A.T. athlete Isaiah White. He has a physical presence onscreen and his mix of tough love and fatherly seduction brings Him’s strongest moments. Casting comedy talent like him and Heidecker and Julia Fox in a movie with almost no jokes creates a palpable dissonance between the film and the viewer, which works to the film’s advantage. It just feels off in some indescribable way, like walking into a conversation that dies down the moment you ask what they’re talking about.

Cam spends most of the movie explicitly brain-damaged from the mascot’s attack, a condition that’s not helped by suspicious blood injections, lack of sleep, and violent tackles during training. Cam’s concussion allows him (and by extension the viewer) to accept the reality of the situation. Yes, it’s weird that Isaiah hunts animals and tans their skin himself, but what’s the alternative? He’s here in the situation and questioning it doesn’t change the reality.

And Withers is able to convey a lot with a little. While the script emphasizes his homegrown roots and natural ability, Withers adds a smirk here or a glower there to hint at a darker Cam than the one featured in the film. One excellent scene showcases Cam and Isaiah shooting guns at targets; Cam handles the rifle more deftly than the audience (or Isaiah) might expect, and his confidence at shooting what looks to be a man in a mascot costume pushes the viewer out of alignment with Cam’s perspective right when the movie needs to push the audience off-balance.

That off-kilter sensibility is reinforced with some inventive shots courtesy of cinematographer Kira Kelly. In one scene, Cam gruesomely headbutts a training partner which the camera shows through a garishly-colored X-ray, the bones cracking into each other like a car crash. In another instance, a football play is shot POV-style with the helmet bordering the edges. It’s unique enough that the moments when the film relies on staid horror tricks– symmetrical framing or a mysterious figure underlit against a dark background–feel like a genuine shame.
Unfortunately, those moments of visual ambition showcase a much thornier and interesting movie than Him ultimately becomes. A third act reveal makes the strange decision to underline an obvious plot point while not addressing one of the biggest lingering questions in the film, and the climax feels more muted than the film itself seemed to be building to. In football terms, Him is a film that gets right up to the goal line but can’t quite deliver on a fourth down miracle. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting to see the attempt.

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