Him: So, You Thought Football Was a Blood Sport Before?
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
So, you thought football was a blood sport before?
Him, producer Jordan Peele’s latest trippy horror – with protégé Justin Tipping directing and co-writing serviceably to Peele’s style – puts the other American Sunday religion through a bonkers meat-grinder of claustrophobia, demented violence, hallucinations, good-versus-evil and things ritualistic.
Lots of it doesn’t make sense, but a fever-dream doesn’t have to. There’s a disparity in the talent-level of the two leads that weakens the (ultimately-predictable) “surprise.” But what plays out is a fair allegory for a sport where men trade their well-being (bones, brain, etc.) for glory. Tipping even (over)uses an x-ray effect during scenes of violence, as if to underscore the injuries beneath.
Tyriq Withers in training in Him
Him starts out like a darker, muscle-bound All About Eve, with highly-rated Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) set to step in from college to replace a retiring GOAT, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), longtime quarterback of the of the multi-championship San Antonio Saviors. (Concussion protocols are in order if you think the NFL was going to lend any of its team names to a horror movie).
Though the camera loves him, Withers is too wooden an actor to convey any scheming aspect to his rise. We know that White has been held up as a role model all Cade’s life by his sports-driven dad, particularly after the veteran came back to win more championships after what should have been clearly a career-ending, sickening bone break. Everything about being a man was encapsulated in that comeback.
If anything, Cade seems ambivalent to a pro career, or that may simply have been his state of mind after being smacked in the head by a presumed White fan. (We meet some scary fans who definitely seem possessed, or something). Or it could be that Withers possesses about the same acting skill as an NFL quarterback. Meanwhile, Wayans’ handle on White is deliciously insane. He doesn’t so much chew the scenery as devour it as he becomes more and more unhinged.
Early in the film, White offers to shepherd his ostensible replacement by inviting him to his home/private training camp facility in the Texas desert.
Said facility fairly screams weird. A boozy Australian doctor (Jim Jefferies) keeps injecting Cade with stuff that makes his eyes glow, and subjecting him to extreme hyperbaric chamber treatments and such.
Meanwhile, the scrimmages with the clearly deranged White and freelance players become more and more violent, with lost teeth, dislocated jaws and other graphic violence. After hours, there are collagen lipped party girls who hover around the young phenom like the seductresses in Dracula.
Is this all an elaborate plan to derail White’s successor? Or is it an object lesson in the pain and commitment that a pro football career will demand after Cade signs that all-important piece of paper?
Obviously, there’s more weirdness to the story, which turns out to be a prosaic allegory about selling one’s soul for fame.
But with hallucinogenic effects and music, Tipping sustains a mood from the opening to the last act that suggests superstardom may be more sinister than we already suspect.
Him. Produced by Jordan Peele. Directed and co-written by Justin Tipping. Stars Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers. In theatres now.