‘HIM’ review: All Guts, No Glory

HIM is a dumb movie, and that’d be fine if it were just a dumb movie — some of the best horror movies are bone-stupid! — but it’s not. It’s a dumb movie with pretensions of being something greater, something profound. A statement on the evils of the institution of football, which sells a myth of greatness at the expense of safety, and the (white) culture so eager to see (Black) players sacrifice themselves at the altar of entertainment. The complicity of owners, of fans, of doctors and other players, all combining to prop up a dangerous cult of sport that feeds bodies into the same grist mill as, I guess, the Roman Colosseum and Jesus on the cross. Or something.

The would-be profundity of HIM is lost in its scattershot symbolism, which - if I’m being generous - attempts to sketch a throughline from football back to painful rituals of masculinity from other bygone eras. Being the Greatest Of All Time, the GOAT, is a trap, because the GOAT is nothing more than a sacrificial lamb.

But like I said, that’s being generous. Him doesn’t do the work to connect its mass of allusions into any sort of throughline or argument. The film, directed by Justin Tipping (Kicks) and written by Tipping, Zack Akers, And Skip Bronkie, struggles under the weight of its own aspirations, as if it is has bought into the same dangerous myth it warns of - No Guts, No Glory - and the flop-sweatier it gets trying to be great, the farther it gets from being any good. That Jordan Peele’s name looms so large in the credits is a shame, because it reminds us all of exactly the standard that HIM is flailing so hard to attain.

The underlying story is simple enough: Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) is a college football star on the verge of going pro, who suffers a traumatic brain injury in a seemingly random attack. When his injury dampens his performance at tryouts and threatens to end his career before it has even started, his idol, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), reaches out with a proposition: Come for a special week of one-on-one training at White’s desert bunker. After eight championship wins for the San Antonio Saviors cementing his reputation as the GOAT, White is finally contemplating retirement. If Cam proves himself worthy, White will recommend him as the team’s new quarterback.

All is not as it seems, of course, and that’s where the movie starts to lose its footing. In trying to allude to so much, HIM struggles to say anything at all. So many moments that are ripe for terror are either fumbled or wasted entirely. A whole-ass hyperbaric chamber is introduced and … nothing happens! Are the creepy visions of a murderous mascot that plague Cam the result of his injury, or something more sinister? Couldn’t tell ya! A nifty gimmick that converts scenes of collision into a sort of X-ray vision, showing the impact on the brain and nervous system, is just that - a gimmick. There is no payoff. A strung-out sports medicine doctor, played by Jim Jeffries, injects Cam with a mysterious substance at White’s command and we never know what it is. Even Cam’s head, with his injury stapled to look like a football, is nothing more than a cute motif in a movie that never once utters “CTE.” Meanwhile, Julia Fox is doing some sort of Temu Gaga thing as White’s influencer wife, and poor Tim Heidecker is hauled in to play Cam’s sniveling agent.

HIM is frustrating in part because, though it isn’t great, it’s not all bad either. It has plenty going for it, most notably Wayans, who brings an unhinged intensity to Isaiah White that never tips over into caricature. His performance is probably the best argument in favor of giving HIM a chance, and I hope it leads to him getting more work in this genre. Amy Poehler recently said Olivia Colman was proof that if you can do comedy well, you can do anything, but Marlon Wayans could be Exhibit #2.

Visually, the film is often quite stunning, with striking tableaux doing more to communicate than the desperately on-the-nose dialogue ever could. In fact, the film looks so good that for a long time, I stayed hopeful it was going somewhere—and in a way, it was. It reaches an almost satisfying climax, not because it resolves the film’s themes or pays off the plot, but because it is so pointlessly, mindbogglingly destructive. After sitting through the mystifying mess of HIM, I deserved the catharsis of watching some heads get caved in. I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of whatever message HIM was trying to convey, but whatever - give me that grist mill, baby! That’s entertainment!