Him, 2025.
Directed by Justin Tipping.
Starring Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Jim Jefferies, Heather Lynn Harris, Tim Heidecker.
SYNOPSIS:
After being invited to train at the compound of a legendary football player, a rising star in the game discovers the dark secret of the team’s success.
The Substance has a lot to answer for, as Justin Tipping’s Him takes on a similar premise, albeit one where the quest for eternal youth and beauty has been swapped for playing sport at a top level for longer than you probably should.
The sportsman in question is Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), a quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors football team. As a young boy, Cameron “Cam” Cade sees White suffer a huge injury that would have forced any other player retire but White recovers quickly and continues to play, breaking records and scoring more than any other player. Fast-forward 14 years and Cam (Tyriq Withers) is an up-and-coming superstar in the game whilst there is a question mark over whether White will retire at the end of the season.
With a big game coming up, Cam suffers a head injury that could potentially force him to retire early but after taking up an offer from White to train for a week at his remote desert compound he discovers that there may be more to White’s longevity in the game than just tough training and discipline, but is he willing to do whatever it takes for success and sign his name on the dotted line?
A twist on the Faustian tale of ‘be careful what you wish for’, Him is a movie full of potential that never really hits its stride thanks to some bizarre choices that hint at things but never quite delivers. The star of the show is Marlon Wayans, who plays Isaiah White as the guru-ish old-timer coming to the end of his career, veering from Zen-like wisdom to drill sergeant brutality at the throw of a ball. Despite delivering the best performance in the movie, Wayans never quite goes full Al Pacino, which is what the movie could probably have done with as it never settles into a groove or hits as hard as it should, pulling back when it should have gone over-the-top, building to a crescendo like The Devil’s Advocate, only with football players instead of lawyers.
Despite Wayans’ best attempts, the rest of the cast don’t seem to reading the same script so you have characters like Cam’s agent Tom (Tim Heidecker), who would have fitted into The Devil’s Advocate better as he is a total caricature of the sports agent and played with the appropriate amount of pantomime charisma, but Tyriq Withers as Cam is a bit underwhelming and doesn’t really sell the ambitious football player, which does make White’s constant belittling of him more believable, but Withers’ seems to be sleepwalking through a lot of it.
Where Him really drops the ball(!), however, is with the script, as this being produced by Jordan Peele you can be sure there are social and racial metaphors at work. Too many if truth be told, which means that the narrative never runs smoothly as it seems to come second to getting messages across. Him is the first movie credit for writers Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers, who come from the world of podcasting, and despite input from Justin Tipping the various strands and ideas never coalesce into a cohesive whole, the story taking several swipes at the pressures on athletes, the power and corruption behind the big hitters, religion, race, family, money, success and social media, that final point encapsulated by Julia Fox as Elsie White, Isaiah’s influencer wife, whose surname and general appearance seem to be screaming something never fully addressed in any dialogue but is most certainly there to be seen.
The final scene is where Him picks up, albeit being too little too late. The racial metaphors come rising to the surface as the board of the San Antonio Saviors is represented by greedy, middle-aged white men, but the surreal imagery that has been peppered throughout via hallucinations also comes to fruition, reminiscent of the final scenes of Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem (without the masturbating priests, although that might have helped), where everything that you have been getting via suggestion now comes fully visible. It is a gorgeous scene to look at and the splatter is fun and superbly rendered, but, again, tonally it doesn’t quite fit with what went before. Had the whole movie taken this approach, not been all over the place by trying to cram in as many plot points that don’t really go anywhere as they could, and stuck with the central idea of Cam being offered something in exchange for success that clashed with his morals, Him would have scored a lot higher.
As it is, Him is a movie that is very watchable and it is easy to see what the filmmakers were going for, but the messy script just doesn’t serve the material well and it is down to the sumptuous visuals and a few strong performances to carry it. It probably helps its cause that Jordan Peele’s name is above the title on the cover – and his fingerprints are all over it – but it is unlikely that Him will be as revered as other movies bearing his name.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
