Review: "Him"
What could have been a fascinating and terrifying film about the blood price of American football is instead a botched mess that's a disaster from beginning to end (Marlon Wayans is great, though!)
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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
I went to see Him, the new horror movie directed by Justin Tipping, last week, my boyfriend in tow. As soon as the film concluded, he turned to me and said, “That is the worst movie that I’ve seen in the last 25 years.” Now, if you know my boyfriend, you’ll know that he’s not the type of person who’s prone to overstatement. If he says that a movie is bad, you know it’s bad. If he says that it’s the worst that he’s seen in 25 years, you know that that’s really saying something.
All I could say in response was: oof.
Him is one of those movies that I knew, based on the trailers alone, was either going to be sublimely disturbing in the tradition of the best horror movies or a complete and utter dud. Even when the dismal Rotten Tomatoes scores started coming out I still held onto hope that maybe this time the critics were wrong, that Marlon Wayans was onto something when he said that the film was ahead of the curve and that future critics would be kinder to it. Having sat through the whole thing and thought about it extensively, I can say that no, in fact, I don’t think history is going to be kind to this film. Perhaps if it had leaned more into its own madness it might eventually have become a cult classic, but I don’t think it has the right kind of gonzo energy to become a cult classic in the future.
First, some summary. Cam (Tyriq Withers) has always looked up to Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), the star quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors. After an assault leaves him perilously close to losing his career, he’s taken in by White himself, who seems to see significant potential in the younger player. Once Cam ends up in White’s secret lair out in the desert, however, things take ever more sinister and terrifying turns, leading to a shocking revelation and a bloodbath.
One can see why Wayans might have more faith in the film’s subsequent appraisal, given that his performance is one of the very few highlights in this otherwise truly bad film. He is both deeply unsettling and yet irresistibly charismatic and alluring as Isaiah White, the star football player who has truly sacrificed everything in order to achieve his success. Watching him play his little games with Cam and with the other devotees that populate his compound is terrifying and creepy, and Wayans offers a master class in how to control one’s face and use it to remarkable effect. Again and again, I found myself wishing that the film had been built around him, because he’s just so damn terrifying and interesting. (It’s not that Withers isn’t good, because he is, but he just doesn’t hold a candle to Wayans). Here’s hoping that Wayans turns to more dramatic roles in the future.
Alas, even Wayans’ commitment to the role isn’t enough to save Him from both its nonsensical story and its thoroughly botched execution. Things happen in this movie for no apparent reason and with almost no narrative or emotional payoff, including one incident in which a deranged fan and her acolytes almost kill Cam in the sauna, only for the woman to seemingly meet her fate at Isaiah’s hands. It remains unclear whether, in fact, Isaiah killed her, or even what the fuck she’s doing there other than showing how deranged sports fans can be. This is just one of many plot developments that seem important only to be revealed to be…not so much.
Then there’s the appearance of the thing. There are, to be sure, several moments in the film that are visually striking, including several key moments in which the perspective shifts so that everything seems to be seen through either an infrared camera or an X-ray. It all looks very cool, and it adds a bit of a thrill to these moments–particularly when Cam loses control and nearly kills another player–but that’s about all that can be said about it. The fact that it lacks anything remotely resembling diegetic motivation makes it feel more gimmicky than genuinely disturbing.
I could have forgiven this film a lot if, at the very least, it had been able to stick the landing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much luck in that regard, either, because in the last ten minutes we learn in quick succession that there’s some mysterious blood lineage, that those who are primed to inherit it have to fight to the death, and that the team’s owners have been behind Cam’s rise to football greatness from the beginning. He then goes on a killing spree, and the last we see of him he’s walking off the field while his manager is pulled apart by a mysterious pentagram.
Unfortunately, this ending just raises a whole new set of questions. Why does his manager get sucked onto a pentagram and pulled apart? Why is there a pentagram there in the first place? Just what the fuck has been going on in the last ten minutes of the movie? I must warn you that Him doesn’t even try to provide any answers to these questions. I suppose it just thought that having enough vibes would see it across the finish line. Rest assured that that is not at all the case.
What makes this film so especially frustrating is the fact that it really could have been a powerful piece of horror filmmaking that demonstrated the extent to which American football culture really is monstrous and bloodthirsty and exploitative. The best horror, after all, is rooted in our deep social and personal fears, and it’s not as if the struggles of pro-athletes are a secret. There are, to be sure, some gestures toward this, particularly in the climax and the conclusion, but everything is so rushed–and so little is explained, and what is explained makes almost no sense–that it all just comes across as hopelessly jumbled and ultimately meaningless.
Someday I hope that we finally get a piece of horror filmmaking that explores the dark, sinister underbelly of American football. For now, we’ll just have to make do with this rather sad and dismal failure of a film, a far from mute testament to what happens when an interesting premise gets bashed to pieces by a shoddy script and an incoherent vision.