About the film (courtesy of Universal Pictures):
Just when all seems lost, Cam receives a lifeline when his hero, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), a legendary eight-time Championship quarterback and cultural megastar, offers to train Cam at Isaiah’s isolated compound that he shares with his celebrity influencer wife, Elsie White (Julia Fox). But as Cam’s training accelerates, Isaiah’s charisma begins to curdle into something darker, sending his protégé down a disorienting rabbit hole that may cost him more than he ever bargained for.
Produced by Jordan Peele, who directed and wrote Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), expectations for his latest film Him were high. This movie asks many questions over its 96-minute runtime and fails to answer many of them meaningfully. Instead, it feels more like a take on Whiplash (2014) if it were about American football instead of jazz, rather than a typical horror movie.
Him opens with Cameron Cade (later played by Tyriq Withers), a young boy watching the Super Bowl with his family. They are rooting for the Los Angeles Saviors and their idol quarterback, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), who wins the game but also suffers what should have been a career-ending leg injury. Cade’s father forces him to watch the gruesome injury, stating, “That’s what real men do.”
Him then time-jumps to Cade as a very successful college player. He suffers a traumatic brain injury and is told that even the slightest disturbance to his brain could kill him if he continues to play. However, after missing a crucial tryout for the “League,” Cade is offered the opportunity to train with White. The eccentric former quarterback lives in a secluded, desert-scorched, Bond-villain-esque home, where he promises to give Cade a second shot at becoming the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time).
The training sequences are the high points of Him. Here, Marlon Wayans’s performance as a crazed villain, straight out of the Far Cry franchise, carries the story. His and Withers’s dynamic throughout these sequences provides the only real sense of consequence for the remainder of the film. However, a particular scene where Cade is running a practice drill and a willing volunteer is significantly injured each time a mistake is made makes it difficult to take any of the characters’ injuries seriously. This is especially true since it is alluded to that Isaiah’s doctor (Jim Jefferies) can mend most sports-related ailments.
The plot tries to stay grounded as Cade is put through a series of tests, and more people warn him that he may not be ready to sacrifice everything to attain his GOAT status. But as things get more and more ridiculous, the plot jumps the shark. There are too many times where an event occurs, and the audience is left wondering if it was a hallucination or reality, with no payoff for the event even happening. By the climax of Him, all hope of a realistic experience has vanished. The story descends into a mess of plot points that feel ham-fisted at the last minute to add emotional weight to the situation but just fall short.
Overall, it seems Him bites off more than it can properly chew and executes few things well. The film does not effectively tackle the intended ideas of “sacrifice” because, ultimately, the protagonist does not seem to sacrifice that much by the end of the story. It hints at the horrors of concussions without fully addressing them. The film is cloaked in a thin veil of theological ideas (both Christian and Pagan) that serve only to make audiences uncomfortable. However, it achieves little more and fails to be scary; instead, it is just weird and often disjointed.
Him opens in theaters starting Friday, September 19th.
