HIM Review: Extreme Football Horror Has A Reach That Exceeds Its Grasp

It’s perhaps a bit odd to note, but I feel as though I’ve been on a real hot streak in 2025 when it comes to my most anticipated new horror movies – which is to say that I have consistently found my expectations either met or exceeded by the scary films to which I’ve been most looking forward. It started very early in the year with Drew Hancock’s Companion offering up great surprises and some wicked tonal gymnastics, and I’ve been shocked and/or overjoyed by many incredible cinematic experiences since then, with the standout titles including The Monkey, Sinners, The Rule Of Jenny Pen, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Bring Her Back, 28 Years Later, Together, Weapons, and The Long Walk.

As all sports fans know, however, all hot streaks must come to an end at some point – and I suppose that makes it oddly appropriate that it’s director Justin Tipping’s HIM that has put an end to mine. I’ve been well-intrigued by the football-centric horror for the majority of 2025, with Jordan Peele’s attachment as a producer being an eyebrow-raiser even before I got to see the freaky first-look footage that was unleashed at CinemaCon in April. The subject matter is a great and underutilized arena for the genre, and previews for the film suggested a hellish psychedelic vision. After seeing the movie, I maintain that the former is still true, and it does live up to the promise of the latter – but it also fails to create a narrative that is substantial enough for all of the style to hang on.

It’s a classic case of a collection of dazzling ingredients not quite amounting to a satisfying whole. In addition to the bold nightmare aesthetics, the movie gets the most out of stars Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans, and it has a lot to say about modern professional athletics. But the blend of the “What’s actually real?” vibe and a plot that has trouble escalating means that it fails to substantially build and doesn’t properly earn its legitimately bonkers finale.

Withers stars as Cameron Cade, a young star quarterback who has been primed his entire life to become known as the greatest player of all time. But in advance of the scouting combine where he is meant to show off his incredible skills to big league teams, capping off his successful college career, he suffers a terrible tragedy. While out on a field practicing alone at night, he is attacked and receives a devastating blow to the head.

The seriousness of the brain injury he incurs is enough to throw his future into jeopardy, but he is thrown an incredible lifeline: Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), the player whom Cameron has long idolized, offers him the chance to train at his personal compound, and if all goes well, he will be selected to be the legendary player’s successor as the quarterback of the San Antonio Saviors (one can assume the NFL was a hard pass on being associated with this film, if there even ever was any outreach for licensing permissions). It’s an opportunity to which the protagonist can’t say no, but he discovers over the course of a week that Isiah has unconventional methods that go well beyond his expectations and take him to some extremely scary places.

Justin Tipping makes use of dozens of tools to try and freak us out.

To be perfectly clear: HIM is one of the most visually audacious releases from a major studio this year, as Justin Tipping and his filmmaking collaborators unleash a bevy of filmmaking tools and techniques to screw with the audience, go heavy on symbolism, and freak out movie-goers. Cinematographer Kira Kelly’s work keeps us in Cameron’s perspective – both figuratively and literally, as first person point of view is one of the aforementioned tools – and with the character’s brain trauma, there is license to go to extremes. Reality and fantasy blend in such a way as to be indiscernible (beginning with surgery staples in the main character’s skull that evoke the laces on a football), and there is a dense atmosphere in which you are ensconced.

This turns out to be both for good and for ill. In the first column, it’s bold and unflinching, and it’s awesome to see Tipping keep audiences in that place. In the second column, if you’ll excuse me using a swimming metaphor in discussion of a football movie, it can be described as all deep end: once you dive into the insanity, it doesn’t function to escalate.

While HIM is full of horrors, it doesn't quite find a way to properly pace them out.

HIM is written with a strict structure that sees each day that Cameron spends at Isaiah’s compound tied to a specific part of becoming the Greatest Of All Time, with themes including “Poise,” “Leadership,” “Resilience,” “Vision,” and “Sacrifice.” The young man gets lost in a spiral of drills, exercise, therapies, and medications… and one could argue that movie-goers do as well. It’s during just the second day of the campaign that the protagonist has to properly execute quick throws lest he want a volunteer on the sidelines to have a high-speed throwing machine launch a ball into his face from just a few feet away – and as you might predict, the end result is the man’s features are eventually turned to mush.

It hits that high note early and rides the energy through to the end, but even with all of the horror that it steadily unleashes, it still feels like it stagnates up until its grand and bloody finale (which is decadently over-the-top, but also has to unleash a whole lot of exposition to wrap things up).

HIM does get the most out of its clearly up-for-anything stars.

Certainly only helping the cause are the turns from Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans, who prove game for every bit of wildness that the work has to throw at them. For Wayans, there is a strong argument to be made that it’s his most impressive performance in 25 years, dating back to his soul-shattering turn in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream, but it’s a talent showcase for the young Withers. Playing Cameron, he demonstrates the ability to project both a charming innocence and a quiet strength, with each having a key role in his mysterious and sinister journey.

Demented imagery and an abundance of style ensures that anyone who sees HIM won’t forget it, and there is every chance we see the talent involved go on to even more interesting work… but that will come after accepting the movie as a work that has a reach that exceeds its grasp. It would be a step too far to call it an underwhelming entry in Halloween Season 2025, but it is disappointing.