Justin Tipping’s Him aims for a triple threat—horror, sports culture critique, and a visceral study of how trauma reshapes a body. When it lands, it fizzes with kinetic energy and a fever-dream sensibility, anchored by a standout performance and bold visual impulse.
The story centers on Cam Cade, a gifted college quarterback whose bright future is in jeopardy after a brutal on-field incident. An encounter with his old idol, Isaiah White, pulls him toward a secretive training retreat hosted at a sprawling, almost mythic estate. Isaiah promises renewal and a chance to pass the torch, but the veneer of mentorship quickly strains under darker motives.
Marlon Wayans electrifies the screen as Isaiah, oscillating between mentor and menace with a sly, unpredictable accuracy. His presence makes the character’s charisma feel dangerous and magnetic, a driver for the film’s most unsettling moments.
Cinematography by Kira Kelly injects the project with a brisk, MTV-influenced pulse. Training spaces are shot like sanctuaries of masculine devotion, while locker rooms tilt into shadowed temples. Sweat glints and candlelight dances across skin in ways that blur the line between sports montage and ritual cinema.
Where the film stumbles is in its ambition. It vows to dissect the exploitation of Black athletes and the commodification of victory, yet it retreats from a sharp, explicit thesis. A campy influencer caricature from Julia Fox feels dated and undercuts the satire, and the tonal shifts can feel jarring—one moment a grounded psychological duel, the next a body-horror sequence that doesn’t always connect to what came before.
Still, the finish can be genuinely audacious. The movie veers into blood‑soaked chaos with a confidence that is at once thrilling and messy, offering a spectacle that lingers even as it wriggles away from a clean, cohesive argument. Tipping’s eye and Wayans’s magnetism keep the pace lively, making Him a provocative experiment worth watching for the promise it hints at in future projects.
Source material and a committed cast aside, this is a film that dares more than it fully achieves. It’s imperfect but vital, a snapshot of a filmmaker and a performer chasing a bigger, bolder notion of what horror can say about sport, fame, and pain.
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