Warning: This post contains spoilers for HIM.
Horror maestro Jordan Peele may not have written or directed HIM, but there’s no denying that seeing his name attached to a project tends to pique fan interest. Unfortunately, this time around, the Peele-produced psychological football horror doesn’t quite seem to be living up to viewer expectations. Although it’s reportedly tracking best among weekend box office newcomers, with projections in the $15-$18 million range, HIM is currently sitting at less-than-stellar critic and audience approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Directed and co-written by Justin Tipping (Kicks), HIM stars Tyriq Withers as rising star quarterback Cameron Cade, a generational football prodigy who aspires to follow in the footsteps of his late father’s favorite player, eight-time champion quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors and professional league GOAT Isaiah White (played by Marlon Wayans). But after Cam is bashed over the head and suffers a career-threatening brain injury the night before the annual scouting combine for the USFF (the movie’s obvious fictional stand-in for the NFL), he must instead prove himself worthy of the Saviors’ QB1 role over the course of a weeklong training boot camp hosted by a near-retirement Isaiah at the isolated private compound he shares with his influencer wife, Elsie (Julia Fox).
As the week of increasingly brutal physical and mental tests progresses, Cam begins to realize strange forces are at play behind the scenes of Isaiah’s mentorship. By the time a bloody final showdown between the pair inevitably rolls around, it feels difficult to interpret HIM as anything other than a clear indictment of the pressures and politics of the professional football industry.
“[T]he game is the game. It can be joyful and beautiful and all those things,” Tipping told the Hollywood Reporter. “Boxing, free solo [rock climbing], whatever it is, people, even knowing the risks, are still going to do it. That’s what humans do. But it’s the business around it that gets insidious.”
Read More: HIM Has Style, But Makes Its Points With Blunt Force
What happens at the end of HIM?
After killing Isaiah in a fight to the death set up to determine who is the true GOAT, or “Him,” Cam emerges from the training compound into an arena where the Saviors owners, his own agent Tom (Tim Heidecker), and Elsie are all waiting for him to sign a contract with the team. Except it turns out the contract is also a deal with the devil of sorts that has allowed the cabal of old, rich, white team execs to supernaturally pass the power of Him down through the blood of the Saviors’ golden player du jour.
Oh, and it turns out the owners not only arranged to have Cam attacked in the first place, but have been grooming him as Isaiah’s replacement since his youth. It’s revealed Cam’s father agreed to these terms and also implied that his dad’s death was orchestrated to guilt Cam into continuing to play football after he tried to quit a few years prior.
However, instead of caving to the demands of the USFF’s powers-that-be, Cam refuses to sacrifice his soul by signing the contract and proceeds to unleash his strength on everyone involved in the demonic proceedings in an ultra-violent massacre. There’ll be no more profiting off the exploitation of players’ bodies for this group of corrupt league officials, at least.
“I told [producers], ‘I am fascinated with what happens if we make this a Faustian cautionary tale,” Tipping told the Reporter. “When the athlete becomes a commodity and a warm body to an institution, what if that’s the haunting? What if we’re taking that and pushing it to extremes?’”
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