Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is the undisputed GOAT leading the San Antonio Saviors to 8 championship titles and being crowned MVP.  With his contract up, there are questions about if he will retire on top or take on the challenge of one more season.  Speculation about his retirement continues to spread when Isaiah invites up and comer Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) to privately train with the legendary quarterback at his private, desert compound.  As Cameron continues to train under the rigorous eye of his idol, he begins to suspect that there may have been a dark secret to thank for his incredible success out on the football field. 

Justin Tipping directs Him, a 96-minute cautionary tale about dark side of obsession and performance, set in the world of football from a script he cowrote with Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie.  Released by Universal Studios, this pop-horror title was taken wide, but, having spent nearly a decade working in television between his first feature, Kicks (2016), and his sophomore follow-up, coupled with the over polished sheen of Kira Kelly’s digital photography giving the film a glossy magazine look, the film takes on a look that almost feels cheap and dated whether it is viewed on the silver screen or at home.  While the film lacks a sense of urgency that these paranoid thrillers often require, Tipping still taps into some real anxieties that performers across genres can relate to, though at times it feels he himself gets lost in the roar and excitement of the game and loses track of whatever message he may have been trying to represent on screen. 

This muddled messaging poses it’s largest hurdle, not in front of Withers as the straight man of the narrative through which the audience enters the world of the film, but rather in front of Wayans, the beguiling force that is not quite an antagonist but still shapes Isaiah as something opposite and opposing of Cameron.  Without a clear sense of where thematically Isaiah needs to land, Wayans is unable to keep as firm a grip over the audience as he is of Cameron.  Him, on its surface, looks like Coralie Fargeat‘s The Substance (2024) but for the TBI-inclined.  In that, we follow an aging actress struggles to remain on top of her industry that is all to eager to replace her with a new and younger model, but the stark difference here in Him is that Isaiah is welcoming his replacement, though Cameron must prove his worth before he will totally cede control of the game to this protégé. 

What Wayans imbued his Isaiah with is a lazily clear sense of obsession, both towards the game but there is an obsession he holds within himself and an obsession he observes in the ravenous masses that scream – or sneer – his name.  Either way, the three of them all boil down to addictions to the game.  It is a point most bluntly made when Cameron first arrives at the compound and a hoard of accolades led by Marjorie (Naomi Grossman) rabidly lament his arrival.  At this still-early point in the narrative, it all fits the tone as the vaguely horned edifices observed in the dusty backgrounds act as a call back to the horned figure that attacked Cameron on the night before the draft, leaving him with a severe head injury and threading his future in the sport.  Later, this theme is addressed more subtlety, almost as a joke, as he tells Cameron that he loves to enter the field and hear the angry boos of the crowd of whom he is about to ruin their entire week when he beats the home team.  Withers is once again hinting at the tribalism that fuels the sport, and what is tribalism if not the origin point for religion?  The power and influence which the game has over the culture of the country is nothing short of incredibly massive; even beyond the professional league which is desperately seeking to colonize itself across the globe as of late, the collegiate level commandeers schools’ entire budgets, the high-school field is glorified as a rite of passage, and even in the peewee league parents will debase themselves weekend after weekend in front of their friends and neighbors.  Withers’ ultimate stance on this phenomenon is unclear, and it is that split second flash of uncertainty that sends Wayans off on his own across the wild throes of the narrative without a clear goal in mind.  On one hand, Him seems to be decrying the absurdity of it all, almost satirically, but then in the next scene it will double down on its love of the game revealing that Withers has that same simple minded and blind admiration that Isaiah has. Both of them are like moths to the stadium lights. 

Opposite Isaiah is Cameron who we can more clearly assign the function of protagonist.  He is the real key to unlocking the film, even if what we see beyond that door frame which he unlocks is left hazy by Withers who plays the role with a wide eyed, slightly questioning quality about it so that we never quite feel totally comfortable with what is happening.  It is a wise decision because his apprehension towards some of the events of the film lend a nervous and uneasy quality to what we are witnessing more so than just the shock value of some of the blood and pulp.  By rooting him as such a human character and letting us witness his devolution into Isaiah’s newest acolyte, we put our backs up against the whole affair a little more than we would have had Cameron accepted this training more openly.  Within the genre, though, Cameron fills the role of the final girl, but there is a real disconnect between our expectations of that kind of role and the performance which he is giving.  That is not to say that it is a bad performance, but his too-cool attitude leaves a little to be desired within the context of the film and we find ourselves rooting for him simply because we understand that he is our hero.  That bridge of sympathy is never quite formed because his burly attitude keeps us at arms distance and Withers never breaks him down completely in front of us yet expects us to still be in sync with his catharsis in the finale, though this blame is also partially Tipping’s who only broke Cameron off screen in the first act and only ever bent the more resilient version that found himself in Isaiah’s compound.  

As for the overall conceit of the film, Tipping frames the upper echelons of the sport as a cabal, keeping the spirit of the one greatest player of all time – the goat – alive through sacrifice and blood transfusions, connecting Cameron to Isaiah to his mentor and his mentor before him.  It is a neat idea but it does not go far enough either in showing the outside influence and the corrupt money that sits in the seats of power of any major organization, nor does it go far enough in showing us the lore of the film.  A few horned motifs pop up now and again as a personification of the Goat, and while that light peppering of the occult is enough to season the narrative to the broadest of tastes, it is not enough to make it a memorable experience.  Too mainstream for A24, Him seems to have been written and constructed for the distributor who is not at all lacking for cult-based horror, but even that one trick pony has begin to slow down as cults are used as an easy out to throw interesting images and concepts at the screen without fully developing them into something viable. One needs only to look at Mark Anthony Green’s Opus (2025) to see that this has become low hanging fruit that can be made quickly, but without cultivation, it is all quite forgettable.

It is endlessly easy to pile on Him because of its glaring shortcomings, but from a distance, the film is still well enough put together and Tipping never once loses control over the tone he wants the film to have. It is fiercely new age in its visuals and its sensibilities with a frank, matter of fact approach to its more pulpy elements that are enough to make audiences squirm in their seats, even if those same images can also smoothly glide off of the retinas. Thematically, the core message of the film may get lost which really weakens the film’s staying power despite an out of the gate wide release with a noticeable marketing budget wisely spent on ads playing across in season football games trying to lure their shared demographic out of the living rooms and sports bars and into the cinemas. It is rough around the edges, but the film, even when ambling, is always working towards something, and coupled with a fascinating pair of actors at the helm of this cautionary tale of chasing fame and immortality, Him may not be the GOAT, but it is certainly not without merit.