Him

Some films are destined to be great, while others are destined only to have great trailers. Him is unfortunately the latter.

Him is directed by Justin Tipping, co-written by Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers and Tipping, and tells the story of Cameron “Cam” Cade (Tyriq Withers). An up-and-coming football prodigy who is looking to make it in the big leagues. His dream? To play for the San Antonio Saviors, the team that his hero Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) has won 8 championships with, as the undisputed Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T) of the sport. As a rising star player, Cam naturally draws in his detractors, and while practicing for an upcoming league combine, he is the victim of a horrible attack at the hands of an anonymous attacker, dressed in a goat costume. The attack leaves Cam with a head injury that threatens his entire career, something that he has been driven towards by those closest to him, namely his father. Desperate to get back to his top form, Cam receives an unexpected invitation from Isaiah to train Cam for a week as a remote compound. Driven to prove himself a worthy successor to Isaiah, who is in the twilight of his career as the Saviors’ superstar quarterback (QB), Cam agrees to the camp, which quickly proves to be not all that it seems.

Produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, Him immediately garnered an air about it that touted it as an exciting film. Peele, who has proven himself to be a great horror director, likes to take risks on director driven films through his Monkeypaw company, and with a pretty electric trailer attached to it, there seemed to be plenty to be excited about with Him. Tipping, a relative newcomer to the filmmaking scene, made a name for himself through his work on various TV series, as well as his 2016 film Kicks (a film I have not seen, but one that has received good reviews). The promotion for Him also saw the push for Marlon Wayans, who turns in a more dramatic and unnerving performance than what audiences usually expect from him. Next to Wayans is another newcomer, Tyriq Withers, whose lead performance as Cam bares the weight of majority of the film. A weight shown through the eyes of a stoic Cam, a young man who wants nothing more than to be the G.O.A.T.

With its testosterone fuelled imagery and rap-based soundtrack, Him is a film all about football. Football as a sport, football as a family, football as a religion… football as a cult… football as a harbinger of evil. Woven between the laces of the ball and the perfect spiral of a QB is an invisible force that attracts those who are tuned into it. Whether that be the diehard and cultlike fans, or the players themselves, for some football holds within it an unavoidable lust and desire that is impossible not to focus on. And that seems to be what Tipping is aiming to get at most with Him. The idea of football as an unavoidable constant that, despite bringing so much joy to some fans and players, also carries with it a threat of evil.

That threat of evil, although very literal within the film, can carry the weight of career and life-threatening injury. Highlighting the damage that football can inflict on its players with the use of x-ray footage, Tipping takes the audience inside the player to truly sell the impact that athletes at the top of the mountain put themselves through in the search for greatness. While the film follows a more sinister path when asking its characters the question of “How far will you go to achieve greatness?”, a question often associated with deals made with the devil, Tipping wants to interrogate the sport and follow the notion that perhaps the real deal being made is one of destroying one’s body in that quest for greatness and for the entertainment of the audience.

While that might sound like an interesting angle to attack football at, on paper, unfortunately for the film it isn’t executed in quite the right way. Him is very much a film of allusions. Through montages set to rap tracks and with the admittedly electrifying image of x-ray footage of someone on the receiving end of a concussion, the film is alluding to the idea that these athletes sell their bodies for entertainment. Through throwaway lines in the film’s opening moments and a single flashback towards the end of the film, Tipping alludes to Cam’s quest for his father’s love by playing football, a hobby that they seemingly shared only for the fact that it was Cam’s father’s interest. These allusions are just not strong enough to make for a compelling enough narrative.

To make matters worse, the film sadly carries with it no tension in its horror elements, which are mostly thrown to the wayside or completely forgotten for long stretches of a film of an already modest length. This sadly just makes for a boring viewing experience, as the audience is repeatedly hit with training clips and Wayans yelling “DO YOU WANT TO BE THE GOAT?” Perhaps this is Tipping going for an allusion to the way CTE is caused by repeated head knocks… or perhaps that’s more so just how it feels to watch the film. Regardless, it’s a structure that doesn’t work for the type of film Him wants to be. Which is disappointing, because despite their repetition, Tipping clearly has a good eye when it comes to crafting these sequences. They do look impressive, and they are accompanied by some pretty good work from the sound department. Every tackle carries with it a brutalising weight.

By the time the film comes to its final moments, Tipping decides to splice in some heavy-handed religious imagery and quickly rushes through a true rise in stakes just so he can get audiences to the films climax, which feels incredibly out of place despite carrying within it everything that film is about. It all concludes very quickly and extremely disappointingly, sadly leaving the audience more hollowed than shocked or frightened. Wayans and Withers deliver fine enough performances and Tippings craft is shown to be strong, with interesting ideas and alluring design, however Him just never reaches its own full potential. It all becomes a bit ironic, in the end, that a film about Cam wanting to become the G.O.A.T through practice never quite finds its own footing, falling short of its own, desired greatness.

Him is in Australian cinemas October 2nd