Universal Pictures
Ever since Jordan Peele broke out into feature film stardom with his excellent horror-thriller Get Out, there is a certain amount of hype and excitement attached to pretty much any project he’s associated with, from the mind-bending Us and sneaky alien invasion film Nope, both of which he directed, to his limp and confusing TV update of The Twilight Zone and cult favorite series Lovecraft Country, to the mixed bag of films he’s produced including Keanu, BlacKkKlansman,Candyman and Monkey Man. Now Peele comes to the aid of director Justin Tipping, better known for his TV efforts, in just his second feature film, Him, which carries on the tradition of those one-word Peele titles.
Him puts its focus on the Cade family, notably dad Cam Sr and his very young son Cam Jr. The family is very heavily into football and young Cam idolizes star quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), who ends up with a major injury during a game-winning play (bone literally sticking out of his leg), which seems to shock the young boy but his dad distracts him with ‘No guts, no glory’ talk and hypes the kid up to believe he will take White’s place when he grows up. Flash forward to years later and Cam (Tyriq Withers) is grown up and has his sights on getting picked up for the next NFL draft. Except a horrific accident on the field renders him with a concussion and swelling of the brain which puts him out of commission. But when the draft comes around, despite medical concerns that his brain has not healed enough for him to engage in a sport known for its violent hits to the players, Cam insists that he is ready because it is what he was born to do. And despite White’s injury, he made it back into the league and became one of the most decorated players ever, The GOAT. Cam has to prove himself, and after he succeeds on the field to show the teams he is ready, his agent gets a call from … Isaiah White. He has chosen Cam to come to his home in the middle of the desert to train for a week to give him the best chance possible of being a first draft. Cam eagerly accepts. There is also a rumor that White is about to retire and he is possibly hand-picking Cam as his successor.
When Cam arrives, he’s confronted on the property by Isaiah’s fans who are more of a cult, attacking the SUV, screaming that they don’t want him, they want Isaiah. Cam is a little spooked but takes it in stride. When he finally approaches the compound, which looks to be built into the ground, he is greeted by a stack of Amazon boxes. The door opens and he enters into what just looks like the home of a rich person who has too much money and doesn’t know what to do with it so he buys weird stuff to put on display. Cam finally locates Isaiah engaging in some taxidermy, everything seems cool and on the up and up, but the training begins … and it is intense. Spanning seven days, Cam is subjected to and witnesses some bizarre and extremely violent behavior, suffering another hit to his head which makes him think he’s hallucinating some of what he sees, unable to contact his family (though he gets caught using a landline in the compound), until the shocking truth is revealed about how Isaiah came back from his injury and became The GOAT, and how Cam is now being groomed to replace him. But will Cam accept what seems to be a literal deal with the Devil?
Honestly, there is no way to sugar-coat this. Him is an incomprehensible piece of body horror-torture porn that has no rhyme nor reason for existing. And how Jordan Peele decided to put his name on this is a question every interviewer should ask. When literally every person at a screening has that ‘WTF’ look on their faces when the credits begin to roll and the lights come up tells you all you need to know about how bad this movie is. No one could tell you what it was about, and at the press screening while trying to figure it out, the conversation veered off into one about a completely different movie which no one had even seen yet but were more engaged with than Him. As someone who has been writing about movies for 25 years, I’ve seen my fair share of baffling, bizarre movies, but this one is at the top of the list of ‘I’ll never get those 96 minutes of my life back’ feelings. I don’t know what the relationship is between Tipping and Jordan, but this is clearly a vanity project for Tipping and he somehow convinced Jordan to put his company, Monkeypaw Productions, behind it. The story seems like it wants to be an indictment on the violent culture of American football, especially the issue of CTE. Or maybe it’s an indictment of the rabid fan culture, or the quest to do whatever it takes to be The GOAT. Who knows? Because the further and further it goes down its bloody, surreal path, you just have to assume Tipping lost his way and only wanted to focus on the visual aspects to show off and distract from the empty story (which he co-wrote).
Universal Pictures
To be fair, the film is gorgeously shot by Cinematographer Kira Kelly, with outstanding Production Design by Jordan Ferrer and Art Direction by Chikako Suzuki and Tyler Standen. There are some moments of violence when the actors become sort of live action X-rays that are visually interesting the first time, but then the effect gets over-used. The film’s score by Bobby Krlic is also outstanding, mixing the instrumentals with extant songs by the likes of Denzel Curry, Guccci Mane and Mobb Deep, cut expertly to highlight and match the scenes in which they are used. From a technical standpoint, the movie is fantastic. But that isn’t enough to warrant the time or money spent to go to a movie theater to see it.
Neither are the performances, which are decent but, again, the actors don’t have a lot of character development to work with. Wayans’ Isaiah has a trajectory of mentor to madman over the course of the week in which the story is set. Tyriq Withers, last seen in the reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer, is certainly easy on the eyes but most of his role requires him to act confused and befuddled, occasionally vicious, while ultimately becoming the ‘hero’ by the final scene, which just rings hollow and is nothing but an excuse for a major bloodbath. The brightest moments come from Julia Fox as Isaiah’s kooky influencer wife Elsie, who may be more than she seems, and a small character part for Naomi Grossman (best known as Pepper on two seasons of American Horror Story) as a truly demented fan. Jim Jeffries also appears as Isaiah’s personal physician but all he does is serve his master and speaks to Cam in vague terms that do nothing to explain what’s going on, forcing him and the audience to try and put all the pieces together … but there are too many missing to complete the puzzle.
Him seems to be nothing but an excuse to portray bloody brutality on the screen in the guise of making a statement about our violent culture filtered through the game of football. And being such a uniquely American story, it’s going to be interesting to see how the film plays outside of our borders. It’s actually going to be interesting to see how it plays within our borders after the reviews (currently at 32% on Rotten Tomatoes) and opening weekend word of mouth get out. In the end, Him is just a big fumble for Peele and Tipping.
Him has a run time of 1 hour 36 minutes, and is rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual material, nudity and some drug use.
Universal Pictures