Justin Tipping’s “HIM” is a totally unimpressive waste of time. It is one of the dullest horror films I’ve seen in years, and it marketed itself as a football-horror film with an “I sold my soul to the devil” type of plot. Being backed by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, it looked like it had potential. But while sitting through it, I was constantly checking my watch.
For nearly an hour, absolutely nothing relevant happens, and when the movie finally does throw something at us, it is shrugged off as an average occurrence. The characters move on and act like nothing happens until the next random event occurs. Something at some point has to matter, but it just never does.
The skeleton of a plot centers on Cam Cade (Tyrian Withers), a young athlete recovering from a blink-and-you-miss-it assault, who comes under the wing of hailed superstar quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans).
Immediately we are hit with our first look at the painfully obvious “devil worshiping” imagery as Cade is driven past a group of White’s “fans” camped outside of his home. This reveals the films’ main premise of a football cult. The issue is that, though this theme was spoiled through the marketing, it was still stretched across the entire runtime until a supposed climax happens.
What this becomes is a 96-minute slog of heavy-handed symbolism and awkward dialogue. The religious “allegories” are so on-the-nose that you can’t even call them allegories. It is just repetitive religious references with no subtlety and no real payoff. It’s symbolism for the sake of symbolism; a parody of a Jordan Peele film.
It never builds into anything larger, and the cast doesn’t sell it either. The script writes them into such stilted situations, and it looks like they genuinely never know how to react. None of it ever feels believable. At the screening I attended, multiple people laughed at the film during these scenes. This film lost the crowd fast and never gained them back.
Stylistically, “HIM” undercuts itself at every turn. The splatter-gore blood effects look cheap, the CGI is barely existent and the soundtrack is filled to the brim with hypebeast trap songs, several of which play back-to-back in short bursts.
Most of the rappers on the soundtrack have also done work for Madden, which makes the comparison more apt. The film feels like “Madden: The Movie” but with a forced horror twist, which is funnier considering that the only enjoyable parts of the film are when they’re doing something football-related.
The scenes of training, coaching and even playing catch better suit the theme. When there are moments of actual football, they’re quickly abandoned for random bursts of violence and vague moments of shock that lead nowhere.
By the end, I was left asking who this movie is even for. Horror fans won’t find much beyond cheap gore, sports fans won’t recognize their world, and anyone looking for a psychological thriller will be left with a muddled mess. Ambition alone can’t save a movie this misguided. “HIM” wants to be shocking, but the only shocking thing is how boring it is.
