Horror master Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope) serves as producer for Him, a movie about the soul-crushing price football players are willing to pay to achieve greatness at the professional level.
Directed by Justin Tipping and starring Marlon Wayans and Tariq Withers, Him operates on a hyper level that flirts with themes about the near-religious fervor for football, twisted masculinity, and unchecked ambition.
Withers portrays Cameron Cade, a gifted college quarterback who's about to enter the professional ranks. Cade hopes to sign with the ridiculously named San Antonio Saviors, a Texas team whose current quarterback (Wayans' Isaiah White) has attained GOAT status.
On the comeback trail from an injury, White invites Cade to train at his Texas compound. It never seems to occur to Cade that White might have ulterior motives.
Cade's task won't be easy. Not only must he hit his stride, he also must overcome the effects of a brain injury suffered after he was attacked by a mascot-like figure in the movie's early going. The attack may not make sense, but it allows Cade to be seen with a visible series of stitches in his head, a reminder of physical horror.
Working from a screenplay by Zack Akers and Skip Brodie, Tipping seems to be straining to find something deep, even at one point including a football-related tableau that mimics The Last Supper. The movie also suggests the possibility of threatening demons and deals with the devil.
The movie's problem is embedded in its exaggerated approach and flashy flirtations with horror tropes as it tries it to be comically parodic and serious at the same time. That might represent wasted effort. Violent enough already, the world of football needs no color-drenched displays of big-screen bloodshed.
By the time Him concludes, it has become a wild
muddle featuring a committed cast and a few striking images -- X-ray-like depictions of hard hits, for example.
I suppose Him has ideas, but for the most part, they remain undigested or submerged in burlesque-like caricature. It neither satisfies as a sharply realized work of genre or one that transcends it. Him tries to say something, but amid its confusing embellishments, I lost interest in trying to figure out what that might be.
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