Him (2025)

 

I should have known from the trailer that I was not going to be a fan of this film. Everything in the movie is the antitheses of what football fans care about in the game. This film takes the fever dream rantings of a person like Colin Kaepernick, and turns them into an incoherent horror film that lacks any narrative and ignores the majority of the aspects of the game. It attempts to send a message about obsessive devotion to the game, through a vaguely supernatural Faustian myth. Although it succeeded at creating a tense atmosphere for the first half of the film, it undercuts those moments repeatedly by the usual trope of it being a dream sequence or hallucination. When the end of the film comes up, I wanted to laugh at the whole thing, and dismiss the elements of the movie that might have made it worth watching to start with.

So in fairness, let me say that the two stars, Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers are excellent. Withers is Cameron Cade, a college quarterback, getting ready to transition to the pros. Early on we see his childish hero worship of the game and it's leading star, nurtured and mirrored by his father, who has passed on. It is never explicitly stated, but there is an implication that his father was killed in action while serving as a Marine. The background stereotypes of a nurturing mother, passed over brother and clinging agent, would be eyerolling if they were any larger part of the film. Everything outside of the scenario that makes up the main part of the story, is simply filler for the main event. Cam has the talent and skills needed to supplant his hero as the new hope of the Saviors, his favorite team, that is until a moment that could be the set up for a much better movie but is wasted on this.

 Isaiah White is the reigning G.O.A.T. of the football league in the film. White has won the league championship eight times and has a cult of worshippers. Cam could have been one of those fans if he did not have the enthusiasm of his youth and the drive of his father behind him. Marlon Wayans is the quarterback that seems to have recovered from a devastating injury, but at what price?  Isaiah is intense and takes Cam into his home training facility, to help him recover the edge that he seems to have lost from the earlier incident. Wayans plays the intensity with humor at times, and with ferocious antagonism at other points. Is he a mentor, a competitor or a predator? This was a good dramatic performance from an actor who is usually known for his comedic roles. His physique is also a key player in the movie, being pushed in Cam's face as a standard to measure himself by.

The training field, recovery rooms and therapy locations, all feel real but they are set in a building constructed to look like a vaginal opening to enter, and then a series of fallopian tube hallways to navigate. The house feels like it was hewn from the stone that it sets on rather than being constructed on that isolated location. The lighting in every area except the field is mood lighting with a heavy accent on dark shadows. Earlier in the film, there was a similar sort of lighting on the practice field where Cam encounters the starting point of the strange journey. 

That's it for the things to recommend the film (with the exception of s spinning football). The story that exists in this world is unfocused and relies on ambiguity to such a degree that you will feel as lost as Cam does on occasion. I have seen plenty of horror films that rely an ambiguity as part of the storytelling. From the 1970s, two films fit that mode perfectly, "Phantasm" and "The Brotherhood of Satan". Ultimately, the lack of clarity in those films is cleared up by the way the stories play out. "Him" feels no need to clarify what is going on, in fact it doubles down on the murkiness of what is happening with a climax that contains things that would fit easily into the first parts of those old movies. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo about gladiators and earning your spot rather than buying it with a sacrifice that gets you there. Cam is supposed to spend a week with Isaiah, and for some reason, the film is structured with a label for each day. Unfortunately, the labels have nothing to do with what unfolds during the day. It feels like an attempt to dress the events in some profundity that is just not there. 

The last horror film that I laughed at, not for it's intend humor but for it's stupidity, was "Us", a Jordan Peele film. Peele produced this movie, so maybe his sensibilities are occasionally suspect. I loved "Get Out" and "Nope", but there is a flaw in the reasoning of the producer here.  Zack Akers,Skip Bronkie, and Justin Tipping are the credited screenwriters, so they are to blame for most of the boring story line that builds no tension and tries to let the production design do all the heavy lifting. Tipping is the director so he gets credit for the look of the film but also the blame for it's lack of energy. Mood itself is not enough to create something interesting. 

I suppose this film might appeal to critics of football as a sport. The violent nature of the game and the risk of injury are lampooned with a sneer that will put off most people who care about the game. The satanic plantation mentality of the writers will also please those who see a game that is so economically successful, that it must be run by the devil. The owner of the team could play Lucifer in a Faustian story if this film were clearer on what it is saying. The closer we got to the end of the movie, the less I cared about the outcome. That is not the sign of a well written script. You will read about this film again on this site when I put together a list of the worst films of the year. There have been plenty of dogs in theaters in 2025, this one may be the biggest in the kennel.