A Faustian football drama whose narrative obviousness isn’t nearly as ridiculous as its over-the-top, in-your-face, to-the-max religious symbolism, Him is an attempt at athletic horror that achieves an ignominious sort of unintentional-humor greatness.
Shot and scored like a music video, with flashy and shallow performances to match, Justin Tipping’s directorial debut, in theaters Sept. 19, is a smorgasbord of satanic silliness, none of it scary but quite a bit of it hilarious. Despite Get Out and Nope maestro Jordan Peele’s role as an executive producer, it’s a B-movie of unholy bombast and absurdity.
As a young boy, Cameron Cade (I Know What You Did Last Summer’s Tyriq Withers) is taught by his father to worship at the altar of the Saviors and their quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans)—literally, in fact, as Cameron’s father has a shrine dedicated to the team and their superstar in the living room.
When Isaiah wins a championship and then suffers a gruesome leg injury, Cameron’s dad—his crucifix dangling in the boy’s face—says, “That’s what real men do. They make sacrifices. No guts, no glory.” That life lesson guides Cameron to the precipice of gridiron renown, as he’s touted as the de facto second coming of Isaiah, whose eight championships and MVP trophy can’t halt time and, with it, talk of impending retirement.
In an interview, Cameron states that, “God willing, I want to be the G.O.A.T.” However, before he can solidify his professional future, he’s attacked late at night on his high school field by a mysterious marauder in a horned helmet, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury.
Unwilling to lose his dream, Cameron attends the combine but, his nerves frayed by family and his agent (Tim Heidecker) and his self-doubt on the rise, refuses to show his stuff. Fortunately, he’s saved (get it?) by an offer to demonstrate his abilities by personally training with Isaiah.
This takes place at the QB’s desert compound, which appears to have been designed by the same people responsible for Dune’s monolithic architecture, all smooth, imposing concrete surfaces, curved hallways, and cavernous spaces. Tipping visualizes this milieu and its inhabitants with a focus on stark shadows and fluorescent lights that, per the film’s biblical overtones, are often framed above characters’ heads to resemble a crown of thorns or the horns of a goat—an animal who, “greatest of all time” acronym notwithstanding, also represents the man downstairs.
Wayans’ Isaiah is calm and confident on the surface yet prone to bursting into psychotic laughter or screaming when the highly charged moment calls for it, and in case anyone missed it, he tells Cameron that some people consider him “a little intense.”
Tipping’s film is divided into seven days (GET IT?), and largely concerns Cameron’s time by Isaiah’s side, during which he’s schooled in the fundamentals of being a legend. To reach those heights, Isaiah explains that his order of priorities is “football, family, and God,” and he gets Cameron partnering with his personal doctor (Jim Jeffries) on a regimen of injections of what appears to be blood.
“It’s going to be a long week,” warns Jeffries’ physician, and that turns out to be true no matter that Cameron is given occasional confidence boosts by Isaiah’s wife Elsie (Julia Fox).
While Cameron thinks he’s ready for primetime, he gets a rude awakening courtesy of Isaiah, who yells at him about taking responsibility for his successes and failures, and pushes him to the limit via a drill in which every mistake results in a random free-agent player suffering harm.
Him is a hazy nightmare of menacing antics and weird images, with Tipping providing recurring quick-hit sights of dilated pupils, skeletons filling with blood and flesh, and x-ray visions of Cameron and others. Cameron additionally suffers hallucinations involving men dressed like demonic Vikings, and he has a sauna encounter with a rabid Isaiah fan who looks like the messier sister of Lady Gaga’s Joker: Folie à Deux Harley Quinn, and who’s part of a crew of Isaiah’s “cult” acolytes. Along with numerous montages set to blaring hip-hop, the material’s corny stylization is interminable.
Wayans goes hyper-schizophrenic as the peerless Isaiah, veering from friendly confidence to vein-bulging mania. No matter his intimidation tactics, he’s such a transparent baddie that he’s never terrifying, although he’s at least more colorful than Cameron, a bland kid destined to recover from his head injury (like another famous guy rose from the dead?) and go toe-to-toe with his idol for the chance to be the best.
Speaking about his dad, who perished during his military service, Cameron states, “I feel like he died for us. So I continue playing for him” (GET IT?!?!), after which Him depicts the prospect—during a media day training session—at the center of a The Last Supper tableau. At this point, the film plunges headfirst into pious parody, with Cameron seduced by all manner of bacchanalian delights, and sitting down at a nightclub with the Saviors owners to informally seal his deal with a toast of suspicious looking red wine.
Professional football chews up and spits out its participants, asking them to destroy their bodies and minds for a fleeting shot at fame and wealth. Him, however, barely has the wherewithal to castigate the brutal sport, too busy is it indulging in third-rate hellishness that emphasizes campiness over serious critique.
Even that would be tolerable if the proceedings doled out some imaginative insanity. Yet its blasphemy is as pedestrian as its plotting is slipshod, marked by rote nastiness—decapitated heads, stabbed necks, spurting arteries—that prevents the film from transforming into a truly ungodly horrorshow.
Regardless of the fact that it features more gnarly violence than your average NFL game, Him is a tame regurgitation of genre conventions gussied up with gaudy flourishes. Tinsel, glitter, giant hats, and furry outfits are everywhere in Tipping’s thriller, underlining the action’s superficiality.
Withers’ phenom may, by saga’s conclusion, get a first-hand lesson about the sinister allure of the spotlight, but those who sign up for this clunky and ludicrous cautionary tale will likely be more amused than unnerved by the ceaseless procession of cinematic penalties it commits.
The post God-Obsessed ‘Him’ Is the Silliest Horror Film of the Year appeared first on The Daily Beast.
