Him (2025) | Review
Remember when celebrity sports figures had personality? From Joe Namath to Joe Greene, star football players have had charisma… Cameron Cade has all the personality of an actual football. Welcome to “Him,” writer-director Justin Tipping’s body horror misfire that tackles the intersection of sports and Satanism with all the finesse of a drunk mascot attempting a backflip.
The premise has potential: What if America’s obsession with football wasn’t just metaphorically religious, but literally demonic? It’s a concept that should write itself, considering the NFL already operates like a money-hungry cult that sacrifices bodies for entertainment. Unfortunately, “Him” fumbles this golden opportunity harder than the Buffalo Bills fumbled four consecutive Super Bowls.
Our “hero” is Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) channeling the emotional range of a deflated pigskin, a rising quarterback whose career gets derailed by a mysterious head injury. Enter Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), an eight-time champion who’s basically if Tom Brady made a deal with Beelzebub instead of just drinking weird smoothies. White invites Cameron to his desert compound for some “training” – and by training, I mean a week-long seminar in how to sacrifice your humanity for athletic greatness.
The compound itself looks like what would happen if a Bond villain discovered Pinterest boards about “minimalist evil lairs.” It’s here that Cameron undergoes increasingly bizarre rituals: blood transfusions, naked physical exams, and football drills that make “Saw” traps look like playground activities.
Wayans delivers the film’s only truly compelling performance, bringing a shark-eyed intensity that suggests he’s the only actor who actually read the script and understood the assignment. He’s genuinely unnerving when he’s spouting quasi-religious football philosophy or casually injecting himself with other people’s blood like it’s a post-workout protein shake. Meanwhile, Wither’s Cameron responds to each escalating horror with the enthusiasm of someone being asked to review their health insurance options.
The supporting cast feels like they wandered in from different movies entirely. Tim Heidecker appears as Cameron’s agent, delivering lines about “Him Kardashian” and “Himothée Chalamet” with the dedication of a man clearly having more fun than anyone else involved. Julia Fox shows up as White’s influencer wife, sporting bleached eyebrows that scream (in perfect vocal fry) “I probably eat babies for breakfast” and offering our protagonist jade butt plugs because… honestly, your guess is as good as mine. She’s very good though, given what she had to work with.
But here’s where “Him” really drops the ball: the camera work, editing, and sound are so bombastic they should be classified as felony assault, employing what can only be described as “Concuss-o-Vision” – a nauseating visual technique that shows brain trauma in real-time through aggressive cuts and seizure-inducing close-ups. Every potential moment of genuine tension gets obliterated by hyperactive editing that makes “Mother!” look restrained.
The film’s final act descends into full-blown religious horror territory, complete with ritualistic sacrifice and supernatural possession. It’s derivative stuff that cribs liberally from “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Suspiria,” and every other horror film about evil cults without adding anything fresh to the formula. By the time the credits roll, you’ll feel like you’ve witnessed a two-hour demonstration of how to transform a clever concept into an incoherent mess.
What’s most frustrating is that buried beneath the visual chaos and tonal confusion is a genuinely interesting critique of American sports culture. The NFL’s treatment of players as disposable commodities, the cultish devotion of fans, the willingness to sacrifice long-term health for short-term glory – these are horror stories hiding in plain sight. But “Him” is too busy trying to be shocking to say anything meaningful about the real horrors it’s supposedly exposing.
The movie wants to be “The Devil’s Advocate” meets “Any Given Sunday” but ends up feeling more like “The Waterboy” directed by someone who just discovered what a Dutch angle is. It’s the kind of film that mistakes loudness for intensity and confusion for profundity, resulting in a viewing experience that’s about as pleasant as getting tackled by a 300-pound linebacker while suffering from the flu.
In short, “Him” is a body horror fumble that should be flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. As the Men On Film critics from the classic “In Living Color” sketch might have said, “Two snaps down… hated it!”
