“Him” (2025) follows Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), who gets to live out his father’s dream: the chance to privately train for six days with San Antonio Saviors’ quarterback, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), who has eight championship rings. There is also the possibility that Cade could assume Isaiah’s position if the GOAT is willing to retire, but Isaiah seems to be in better shape than Cameron. Does Cameron have the killer instinct to do what he wants?
Withers’ smooth and easy transition from supporting actor to protagonist proves that being one of the bright spots in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (2025) was not a fluke. In “Him,” he gets to show his range and body. Not since casting director Nikki Barrett from “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (2024) has someone managed to choose a child actor who looks like time travel exists, and they simply filmed the adult version as a child. Casting director Carmen Cuba did a great job choosing Austin Pulliam to play young Cam as a wide-eyed kid focused on the televised football game while his family are background noise constantly moving. Withers is convincing as the continuum of that child, and football is the equivalent of the static on the tube television that sucks Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) into its portal in “Poltergeist” (1982).
Wayans, who usually does comedy, leverages his experience to play an approachable and terrifying madman who can veer from soft spoken to drill sergeant with a nose boop complete with sound effects as shown in the trailer. He makes some unhinged, unique, counterintuitive acting choices, which makes “Him” unpredictable and riveting. It is also nice to have a Black villain without it feeling racist. Wayans approaches the role with a twenty-first century Marlon Brando-esque charm like “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996).
Julia Fox is brilliant. She seems to be channeling Lady Gaga from “American Horror Story” except with more ambiguity sometimes parental and other times like a satirical, exploitive influencer. As a character, Isiaiah’s wife Elsie skewers folks like Gwyneth Paltrow and the Kardashians. Fox’s sense of humor is on display as she plays it straight but reveals an unexpected physical sense of comedic timing. The head of Isaiah’s fan club, Marjorie (Naomi Grossman), appears to vaguely imitate her style. The fans are innately terrifying and only seem marginally exaggerated from the real deal.
Even though “Him” is a kinetic movie with a lot going on, the camera only has eyes and stillness for Cade and Isaiah. Everyone else is orbiting around them and often a blur, which helps the audience to relate to these two unrelatable men who torture themselves for the death cult of football. Whenever you watch a horror movie, you should ask yourself if the horror is rooted in people/science, the supernatural and/or aliens. It does not take a lot of juging up to find the horror in football. As I’ve written before, football has always struck me as a syncretic, abomination of Christianity that cloaks itself in Christian symbols, but requires human sacrifice of children to young men and defiles the Lord’s Day/sabbath, often competing directly with service and fellowship. (Side note: I watched “Friday Night Lights,” the 2004 movie and television series, and never got around to writing about it because I wanted to read the book too, so these feelings started a long time ago.)
Director and cowriter Justin Tipping noticed the culty vibes and blasphemous, idolatrous use of Christian mythology: The Last Supper, nicknaming the interior football field a church, the name of the team, fan club camped nearby with a sign that says Deity, lots of talk of the Chosen One, the sacredness of the blood, six days of (re)creation, which is the name of a place that Cameron visits on the sixth evening, a father up in heaven, goat as Satanic, apples (not Biblical, but commonly considered the forbidden fruit). Combined with urban myths of celebrities and the Illuminati, it is not a stretch to see anti-Christ vibes.
Cam’s problems start with a head injury, not a concussion, and honestly if Tipping and his fellow writers, Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie, had gone no further than that in exploring the tenebrous side of football, “Him” would have been frightening enough. When Cam enters Isaiah’s home, it feels like entering a cult. Think “Midsommar” (2019) with the isolation, the physical strain, the strange medical treatments and psychological manipulation to get him to stop caring and be more violent, but unlike the young people visiting Sweden, Cam is trained to obey orders, so he is vulnerable on his first day. It feels like a more innocent and honest version of “Lurker” (2025) with Cam willing to abase himself to any degree to win Isaiah’s approval and get the Saviors’ owner (Richard Lippert) to sign him up.
There is actually an interesting mythology underpinning the mystique of “Him” rooted in indigenous football history starting with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a government boarding school located in Pennsylvania, which invented the forward pass. It will be really interesting to read indigenous film critics’ reading of the movie since the idea of appropriation, marginalization and degradation of Native American culture is framed as football’s original sin. The movie does not mention that Native American children died and were buried there with ongoing efforts to repatriate them to their original tribes. So, football is not just America’s favorite pastime, but also a form of propaganda to hide a genocidal agenda.
“Him” is an ambitious venture that puts a lot on its plate and even as it becomes more fantastical, feels literal with no need for deeper analysis than what is presented on screen. Isaiah and Marcus (Jim Jeffries), the onsite physician, explicitly state the subtext in the dialogue. The trio of writers want to leave no stone unturned. Instead of committing to one concept, pile more on. If you are a seasoned movie goer, it will feel a bit on the nose, and for a more casual moviegoer, throwing so much at them could overwhelm them since as they get barely used to one idea, another gets thrown at them before it is fully digested.
Fortunately, Tipping is a solid director that can hold an audience’s attention. There are some neat x-ray vision shots to show how Isaiah and Cameron’s bodies are affected. After a wild party night, Tipping shoots the compound from the side, and it looks like a naked woman lying on her back. The landscape is used in a way that makes “Opus” (2024) feel more disappointing in retrospect. It makes the whole process seem more systematic like a pagan sexual ritual. People often wear crosses, but as the movie progresses, they appear longer than usual at some angles as if they are upside down. The goalpost is shot reverberating like a tuning fork. Any patches of space with no light can have bodies emerge from the darkness. There is a lot of subliminal imagery. The ending could be compared between a cross of “The Home” (2024) and “Ready or Not” (2019).
“Him” is a heavy-handed film that is an entertaining watch with a valuable lesson. It is also another link in a growing chain of movies that refuses to turn the other cheek and seeks bloody revenge for historical wrongs. Will anyone apply the lesson in real life and protect their children from the multiple physical and spiritual dangers of football? Probably not. They will dismiss “Him” as just a movie and sacrifice their children.
