Style Bludgeons Substance In The Metaphorically Obvious Him

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There is something to be admired about the go-for-broke performance Marlon Wayans delivers in Justin Tipping’s Him. His character’s winking charisma and berserker fury are a reminder of Wayans’ consistently undervalued talent and how consistently movies like Him fail to serve it. The actor is so ferociously present here that he elevates a film that should test his mettle but instead leaves him adrift. He plays Isaiah White, messianic quarterback of the San Antonio Saviors, who becomes a devilish mentor for rising star Cam Cade (a comparatively inert Tyriq Withers). Isaiah knows that his superstar sell-by date closes in, which sharpens the dynamic between he and his student well enough even if, more distressingly, it brings to the fore the odious realization that Him is going to have a lot more on its mind than just football.

Does it ever. Tipping, with co-screenwriters Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers (whose script lingered on the Hollywood Black List until Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions snapped it up), tortures themes of athletic sacrifice with so many blunt force religio-philosophical metaphors that Him often shoots off like a pretentious pigskin passion play. Fittingly, a head injury is the inciting incident that sends Cam down his scorched path of physical and mental oblation: a super-fan smashes him in the head during a late-night training session, and his skull is stapled in a pattern resembling the stitching of a football. Later, he hallucinates swarming paparazzi as a plastic bag is pulled over his head; fame, after all, can be suffocating! There are other dreadful examples, but the boneheaded crescendo is when our anointed sports star sits at the center of a long dinner table, flanked by acolytes who adore, envy, and may even betray him.

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It’s tempting to assume Tipping is fucking with us. How could he not be? Him is so overwrought, so unembarrassed to drive its story points home that the exertion to convey Cam’s descent into professional hell feels deliberately comical. Then there’s the presence of two co-starring comedians: Tim Heidecker plays Cam’s smartassed agent, while Jim Jeffries drifts through the movie as Isaiah’s compromised personal doctor. (Heidecker, especially, flirts with parody before he’s freed to dive headlong into it.) To the director’s credit, by the time his film staggers into its final act, all his showboat infernal imagery, thuddingly obvious foreboding (by what demonic rites does Isaiah prolong his talent?), and a borderline camp Julia Fox who tempts Cam with forbidden fruit, Tipping embraces the viscera-flinging absurdity he’s been teasing all along. Him would be a laugh riot if it didn’t take itself so seriously.

Hell, this has me all over the place. Back to the beginning: Cam’s destiny was preordained long before he met Isaiah, groomed for future glory by a domineering father (Don Benjamin), who, before his untimely passing, sat Cam in front of the TV every day to watch and rewatch his hero’s first catastrophic, career-testing injury. Dad’s lesson? Cost. So, by the time Isaiah asks Cam to stay at his desert compound for a week-long training session to scrutinize the Saviors’ potential new QB, his student has already been warped by a lifelong quest to be football’s next GOAT. The film then splits into chapters—Day One: Fun; Day Two: Poise; Day Three: Leadership, and so on—counting the increasingly hallucinatory days to Cam’s revelation that professional football ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Naturally, the first quarter of Him is the most engaging because it’s at least tethered to some kind of reality. His mother, Yvette (Indira G. Wilson), centers Cam in these early scenes, but their emotional connection eventually wanes as Isaiah’s culture of hype and abuse consumes him. This isn’t a consequence of Cam and Isaiah’s evolving relationship; like all the characters in Him, Yvette’s role in the story is merely boiled down to the basest essentials. Character doesn’t fuel Him—vibes do.

And vibes command the film to its detriment. There is an admirable effort to depict the male form in various states of agony, but like its themes and plot, the imagery of Him is so belabored it becomes meaningless. X-ray photography is deployed whenever athletes collide; bones turn to porcelain, and grandiose declarations are delivered with a macabre rictus grin. Cinematographer Kira Kelly composes every shot so that Withers and Wayans are almost always framed dead-center to accentuate either intensity or curiosity, and they are always flanked by sleek production design that makes Isaiah’s compound resemble an alien hypebeast cathedral built in tribute to swagger. The sets look great, and the compositions can be striking. But it’s all edited into montage murk that not only renders the story incoherent, but its sense of place and movement, as well. For a movie that’s about the high price of playing football, that’s death.

There was great potential here. Isaiah learning the limits his heir apparent is willing to toss aside for greatness. Cam, in turn, discovering what is required of him to achieve that which he’s been told all his life he wants, and rightfully questioning whether his desire is real now that he’s at the summit. Tipping approaches this dilemma but is too intellectually distracted to focus on the raw complexities that would otherwise give it shape or resonance. He opts for spectacle, which wears thin fast.

On the surface, Him can look and feel like a stylish, frenzied, athletic horror nightmare poised at the line of scrimmage between Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday and Taylor Hackford’s The Devil’s Advocate, a gridiron fable of ambition and damnation. That it never fully coheres as such isn’t the fault of its premise or its performances but of Tipping’s torqued-up execution. He smothers the material in hyperactive montage, every idea pushed to its most obvious extreme, until style bludgeons substance and leaves it twitching in the end zone. All that remains is Wayans, who gives the film the heat it otherwise lacks, eclipsing everyone around him and, catastrophically, leaving his lead in the dust. In effect, he fires off a Hail Mary without a receiver in sight.

Director: Justin Tipping
Writer: Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers, Justin Tipping
Stars: Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies
Release date: September 19, 2025

Jarrod Jones is a freelance critic based in Chicago, with bylines at The A.V. Club, IGN, and any place that will take him, really. For more of his mindless thoughts on genre trash, cartoons, and comics, follow him on Twitter (@jarrodjones_) or check out his blog, DoomRocket.

Style Bludgeons Substance In The Metaphorically Obvious Him

A ferocious Marlon Wayans performance can’t save Justin Tipping’s football horror movie.