Football and horror: an idea that hasn’t been shown on the big screen until now with directors Justin Tipping and Jordan Peele producing “HIM,” a movie that released on Sept.19, 2025, produced by Peele’s Monkeypaw productions. The movie follows a young QB named Cameron “Cam” Cade, played by Tyriq Withers, who after suffering a possibly career ending head injury is brought to a private training facility by his childhood hero named Isaiah White, played by Marlon Wayans. White is the GOAT of football who is thinking about retiring. Cam spends seven days at the facility, where the place gets more and more disturbing with demonic actions and off-putting events happening as Cam loses himself. Isaiah shows his true colors and Cam has to figure out what he is willing to sacrifice to achieve greatness.
As for public opinion, it made around $28 million, but the movie has been getting a lot of hate recently, with it only having a 31% rating by critics and 58% from casuals. (Rotten tomatoes “HIM”). However, people are being a bit too harsh on it. Most of the other horror movies released this year lack in comparison to this. While I admit that the problems people have like the second half falling off, going too much into the supernatural and the movie being more “style over substance” with the main plot not having much to it beyond the surface are true. But I feel that the first half is enough to satisfy the people that came mainly for a football horror movie. And the style is fantastic with all the secret messages that are present through the film.
The two main leads were both fantastic. Wayans gives arguably his best performance ever as Isaiah, being able to go from charming and cool to creepy and dark in seconds. Wayans–who’s mainly known for comedies like “White Chicks” and the first two “Scary Movie” films–proved that he can do more than just comedic roles with this movie, while still having some funny scenes that highlight his charisma. Withers also gives his best performance in this movie. He’s a fairly new actor and his only notable movie besides “Him” is the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” remake that came out earlier this year. While I wasn’t a fan of it, he was definitely a bright spot. With “Him” being his first starring role, he ended up matching with Wayans greatly. The two of them have great chemistry throughout the movie.
The movie has an overarching theme which is the idea of selling your soul or making heavy sacrifices to achieve greatness which is heavily present throughout the movie. The suspenseful scenes kept me on the edge of my seat due to the fantastic cinematography and camera work that went into the movie. It uses X-Ray moments to really hit home the physicality of the hits of football, which made the scenes much more intense.
Generally, the first half of “Him” is great, with it focusing on the football mostly with horror in the background. This is very unlike the second half, which was mainly all horror with a tiny bit of football in it. I did like the overarching theme of sacrificing and the cost of fame, with satanic imagery all throughout the movie, which kept the idea of “selling your soul” in the back of my mind. The soundtrack was mediocre, with some songs that they used well in a few scenes. A song by Denzel Curry simply called “Him” was the standout of these, with its high energy vocals and lyrics relating to the movie. The runtime of the film being only an hour and 39 minutes was a bit too short, seeing as if it was longer the second half wouldn’t have been as rushed as it ended up being. The ending was both great and confusing, leaving questions about what will happen to Cam without ever saying specific; it also gave a satisfying ending to Isaiah. And while it’s not highly favored by many. I still think you should watch it if you’re into football and/or horror.
In the end, I would rate “HIM” a 5.5/10
