Him (18)

Cameron Cade is predicted to be the next great quarterback of American football, realising the dream of his late father. During a night-time training session, he suffers a traumatic brain injury that throws his glittering future with the San Antonio Saviors into doubt. To allay the owners' fears, Cameron agrees to attend a week-long boot camp run by retiring star quarterback Isaiah White at his secluded desert compound.

LondonNet Film Review

Him (18) Film Review from LondonNet

In an era when top athletes are venerated as gods and devoted fans become their adoring acolytes, who assumes the role of monsters? Us or them? Director Justin Tipping explores the price of fame in a cautionary psychological horror thriller produced by Jordan Peele, which fumbles the ball before it can score a touchdown with potent themes of toxic masculinity, self-sacrifice and menacing mentorship. A script co-written by Tipping, Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers inflicts a traumatic brain injury on the lead character in the opening act and spends the next hour bombarding us with nightmarish imagery inside his head and in the real world…

It becomes impossible to distinguish between the two and Tipping provides us with no signposts, so when people start to die and gallons of viscous red blood slosh around the screen, why should anyone care when it could all be a figment of the anti-hero’s fracturing mind? That tug of war between internalised and externalised fear ultimately cleaves apart Him, leaving just committed performances from Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans as ambitious protege and seasoned veteran embroiled in a messy exchange of power and chest-puffing machismo. The bewildering climax resembles a gorier version of the series of aftershave commercials that feature topless and chiselled male sports stars wandering around a sun-baked desertscape. Take a big whiff, Tipping’s film smells a little off.

Cameron Cade (Withers) is predicted to be the next great quarterback of American football, realising the dream of his late father (Don Benjamin), who instilled in him the mantra: No guts. No glory. During a night-time training session, Cameron suffers a blow to the head that throws his glittering future with the San Antonio Saviors into doubt. His mother Yvette (Indira G Wilson) and girlfriend Adrienne (Tierra Whack) assure him the injury is a minor setback.

To allay the team owners’ fears, Cameron follows the advice of his manager (Tim Heidecker) and agrees to attend a week-long boot camp run by retiring quarterback Isaiah White (Wayans) at his secluded desert compound. Behind closed doors in air-conditioned luxury, Cameron endures an unorthodox training regime that will supposedly prepare him to accept the mantle from Isaiah. However, the radical methods employed by Isaiah’s social influencer wife Elsie (Julia Fox) and the compound’s staff, including medic Marco (Jim Jeffries), untether Cameron from reality.

Bookmarked into chapters representing the days of the training camp, Him strives to mimic the unsettling tone of Peele’s 2019 doppelganger horror Us but Tipping traps his film in limbo between being scary and creepy. Consequently, he achieves neither. A teased jump scare involving Isaiah’s deranged fan Marjorie (Naomi Grossman) descends into absurdity. Tipping and co-writers crowd the playing field with interesting ideas but they can’t string together successful passes between them.

– Kim Hu