September 18, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Justin Tipping
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. state, the horror film “Him” features a racially diverse cast of characters (African American, white and a few Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An aspiring pro football player is mentored by his longtime idol (a celebrity quarterback), but the protégé finds out there’s something sinister about this football star and the people around him.
Culture Audience: “Him” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and horror movies with a sports angle, but “Him’s” weak narrative and tangled plot add up to a bunch of jumbled nonsense, most of which isn’t scary at all.
Watching the atrocious horror movie “Him” is like being forced to watch someone’s wretched psychedelic fever dreams about making American professional football look demonic. This incoherent mess is embarrassing for all involved. If “Him” were a football team in a game, the team’s final score would be zero because of all of the team’s incompetent fumbles.
Directed by Justin Tipping, “Him” was written by Tipping, Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers. The movie seems to want to make a statement about people selling their souls to the devil for fame and fortune. The problem is that the story is told in a boring and witless manner. There is absolutely no suspense, but the irritation level from viewers who watch this dreck will increase as the movie lurches and stumbles to its terrible end.
“Him” begins by showing a boy named Cameron “Cam” Cade (played by Austin Pulliam), who’s about 9 or 10 years old, as he enthusiastically watches the LXVII Championship football game on TV. The real team names and logos for the National Football League (NFL) and the Super Bowl are not in the movie, presumably for legal reasons. However, “Him” depicts this story in the world of the “big leagues” of American professional football. It’s supposed to be the NFL without the movie actually saying it out loud or showing the words.
Cam is excited because his football hero Isaiah White (played by Marlon Wayans), the star quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors, is playing in the game. Cam’s father Cam Cade Sr. (played by Don Benjamin) is also cheering on Isaiah. Cam Sr. encourages Cam Jr. to admire Isaiah so much, Cam Sr. tells Cam Jr. that he expects Cam Jr. to be just like Isaiah.
The movie gets the title “Him” from a scene early in the movie where Cam Sr. and Cam Jr. are watching Isaiah on TV. Cam Sr. asks Cam Jr. who Cam Jr. wants to be like. Cam Jr. responds by looking at Isaiah on TV and shouting: “Him!”
While watching this championship game, superfan Cam Jr.’s elation turns to dismay when Isaiah gets seriously injured. However, Isaiah is able to recover. Cam Sr. comments to Cam Jr. about this injury that could’ve ended Isaiah’s career: “See that, Cam? That’s what real men do. They make sacrifices. No guts, no glory.”
“Him” then fast-forwards 14 years later. Cam Sr. is dead (the movie never says how he died), but Cam Jr. (played by Tyriq Withers) is a rising star quarterback who’s being hailed as “the next Isaiah White.” Cam is predicted to be a top pick for the upcoming Scouting Combine for the football league that shall not be named in the movie. But before that happens, one of Isaiah’s fanatical fans (played by Maurice Greene), who’s wearing in a ghoulish ram’s head as mask, attacks Cam with an axe while Cam is alone at night on a football field. This so-called fan is never caught.
Cam doesn’t die, but he has to get surgery that leaves noticeable stitches on his head. Cam is self-conscious about the injury and scar, but it doesn’t stop him from pursuing his longtime dream of being a star quarterback on a professional football team in America’s biggest football league. And that’s why Cam is extremely flattered and jumps at the chance when Isaiah personally invites Cam to train with Isaiah at Isaiah’s remote compound somewhere in a desert area. (“Him” was actually filmed in New Mexico.)
Cam has several people who also encourage Cam to go to this compound: his widowed mother Yvette (played by Indira G. Wilson), who’s also a football fanatic; his supportive girlfriend Jasmine (played by Heather Lynn Harris), who’s been his sweetheart since they were in high school; his older brother Drew (played by Geron McKinley); and Cam’s opportunistic agent Tom (played by Tim Heidecker), whose annoying personality is supposed to be the movie’s comic relief.
It should come as no surprise that Cam and his supporters expect him to be a quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors. Isaiah is still the star quarterback for the San Antonio Saviors, but he’s at an age when most professional football players retire or are very close to retiring. Isaiah’s invitation to train Cam seems to be a clear indication that Isaiah wants to groom Cam to be Isaiah’s successor.
Jasmine is a little possessive of Cam and says that she would be okay with him not playing professional football. But it’s a statement that’s hard to believe because Jasmine does things like tag along with Cam when he does interviews to make sure that the coverage mentions that Cam has a girlfriend. Jasmine already seems to be imagining her share of the fortune that she expects Cam to make as a pro football player.
“Him” repeatedly shows that Isaiah has a bizarre cult following of people who dress like they got lost on the way to an occult Halloween party. They wear masks that look like ram heads, or they wear garish clown makeup that would fit right in at an Insane Clown Posse concert. Isaiah’s most fanatical followers don’t want him to be replaced, which is an unrealistic belief because all professional football players eventually leave their leagues (voluntarily or not) and are replaced.
One fan in particular named Marjorie (played by Naomi Grossman) takes things to extreme: When Cam arrives by car at the compound, Marjorie and some other obsessed fans are standing on the side of the road that leads to the compound. Marjorie spits at the car window where Cam is and yells at him, “We don’t want you!” Marjorie is seen again later in a violent and degrading scene.
Even though “Him” is told in six chapters, it doesn’t make the movie more cohesive or interesting. Each chapter is just a series of dull, repetitive and/or nonsensical scenes. At the compound, Isaiah is hard-driving but also insecure about being an aging athlete. Does Isaiah really have an interest in helping Cam? Or is it a case of the old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”?
As soon as Cam arrives at the compound, Isaiah tells Cam that Cam will be experiencing a “mini-boot camp” that has “radical detachment” from electronic devices. Cam’s phone gets taken away, and he’s told he can’t use any computers. However, Cam doesn’t really have a “radical detachment” from electronic devices because during his time at the compound, Cam uses other phones to call his loved ones. It’s one of many inconsistencies in the movie.
Cam eventually meets some creepy people in Isaiah’s inner circle, including Isaiah’s vixenish wife Elsie (played by Julia Fox), who’s a social media influencer with a vacant stare and an evil smirk. Elsie flirts with Cam in a way where you know it will eventually lead. She does things such as show up in the compound’s gym while she’s wearing a skin-tight metallic evening gown, just so she can lean over Cam as he’s lifting weights and he can get a good look at her body.
Also in Isaiah’s entourage is Isaiah’s sports doctor Marco (played by Jim Jefferies), who does something weird when Cam is taking an ice bath: Marco injects Cam with Isaiah’s blood without Cam’s consent. Marco tells a shocked Cam as Marco walks away: “Many religions would consider his blood holy.” This movie is not subtle at all.
Isaiah and Elsie have the same publicist, whose name is Adrienne (played by Tierra Whack), a vapid sycophant who doesn’t do much in the movie but tag along with Elsie. Other supporting characters are Isaiah’s trainer Malek (also played by Greene) and Cam’s close friend Murph (played by Akeem “Guapdad 4000” Hayes), who is also star-struck by Isaiah.
“Him” can’t even be clever when it comes to the movie’s cliché scenarios. There are scenes of Cam going through brutal athletic training, with Isaiah shouting at him like a tough coach. There are multiple scenes of Cam injecting steroids, as he feels pressure to be a better athlete than Isaiah. There’s the inevitable scene of Cam partying in a nightclub, as he’s surrounded by female strippers and other women who are ready to seduce him. And there are many scenes of Cam having nightmares and hallucinations, which are jump scares that go nowhere.
Oscar-winning “Get Out” screenwriter Jordan Peele is one of the producers of “Him.” Peele’s name is being prominently used in the marketing for “Him,” which is more proof that slapping Peele’s name on a project won’t guarantee that the project will be any good. Peele was once hyped as the next great horror filmmaker, but he hasn’t made a horror movie yet that is as Oscar-worthy as 2017’s “Get Out,” which was Peele’s feature-film directorial debut. Somewhere, M. Night Shyamalan is nodding in agreement.
Although there is some effort from Withers to make his Cam character more complex than Cam really is, the rest of the cast members in “Him” just coast by on the superficiality of how their characters were written. “Him” tries to make a grand statement about how wealthy owners of American football teams buy and sell athletes like prize horses, and the athletes are complicit in how they are dehumanized in these transactional deals. But this dreadful dud of a movie can’t even get that messaging right when it’s thrown in toward the end, where a final showdown is more “bloody bore” than “terrifying gore.”
Universal Pictures will release “Him” in U.S. cinemas on September 19, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on October 7, 2025. “Him” will be released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on November 11, 2025.
