I’ll be honest—I had to pause Him multiple times before I could finish it. Not because it was too scary, but because I kept feeling lost in a world I didn’t fully understand. This 2025 football horror film, produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and directed by Justin Tipping, left me in this weird liminal space between fascination and complete bewilderment. Maybe it’s my lack of football knowledge. Maybe it’s the film’s intentionally chaotic approach to storytelling. But watching Cameron “Cam” Cade’s descent into the nightmare of Isaiah White’s training compound felt like being thrown into the deep end of a pool where everyone else knows how to swim, and I’m just trying not to drown.
The Setup: What I Could Grasp
The basic premise is straightforward enough: Cam (Tyriq Withers), a rising-star quarterback, suffers a potentially career-ending brain injury right before the big scouting Combine. His hero, the legendary eight-time champion Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), offers him a lifeline—come train at his isolated desert compound for a week, and maybe, just maybe, Cam can salvage his dreams of becoming the next “him,” the next G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time).
What starts as an opportunity quickly spirals into something sinister. The compound is surrounded by masked, zombie-like figures who definitely don’t want Cam there. Isaiah’s training methods go from intense to sadistic—blood transfusions, mysterious injections, brutal physical punishments. There’s a scene where a guy gets hit in the face repeatedly with footballs shot from a machine, point-blank, until he’s bloody and broken. All because Cam missed some throws. And the kicker? The guy thanks Isaiah afterward, laughing maniacally about being part of molding the next great quarterback.
That scene stuck with me, not because I understood the deeper football metaphor, but because it felt like watching someone trapped in an abusive relationship convince themselves it’s love.
Where I Got Lost: The Football of It All
Here’s where I have to come clean: I don’t really get football. I know the basics—touchdowns, quarterbacks, that whole thing—but the culture around it, the mythology, the almost religious fervor? That’s foreign territory for me. And Him is deeply, unapologetically embedded in that culture.
The film is packed with football-specific imagery and references that I’m sure resonated with fans of the sport but left me squinting at the screen. The way Isaiah obsesses over “watching film.” The significance of being a quarterback versus any other position. The weight of being “chosen” to lead a team called the Saviors. The film expects you to understand why this particular sport commands this level of devotion, sacrifice, and yes, horror.
Critics noted that the film uses football as a metaphor for toxic masculinity, cult-like devotion, and the commodification of Black athletes’ bodies. The San Antonio Saviors (not a real team, thankfully) become a stand-in for how professional sports chew up and spit out young men, especially Black men, treating their bodies as expendable resources in service of entertainment and profit. Isaiah’s mantra—”Football first, family second, God third”—is meant to be chilling, a complete inversion of Cam’s original values.
I got that intellectually. But emotionally? I felt like I was watching from outside a window, unable to fully access what should have been the film’s emotional core.
The Weirdness: What Actually Worked for Me
Ironically, what kept me watching wasn’t the sports commentary—it was all the bizarre, nightmarish imagery that the film throws at you like those footballs to the face.
The mascot. Oh god, the mascot. Throughout the film, Cam is haunted by this glittering, grotesque mascot figure wielding a sledgehammer. Is it real? Is it a hallucination from his brain injury? The film never gives you a straight answer, and that ambiguity actually worked for me. The mascot becomes this perfect symbol of something I could understand: the way trauma and pressure can manifest as literal monsters in your mind.
The X-ray sequences were brilliant. Director Justin Tipping and cinematographer Kira Kelly repeatedly show us the internal damage—the bleeding brains, the fractured bones, the biological cost of violence. These stylized medical horror moments cut through all the football jargon and hit on something universal: bodies breaking down, pain that can’t be ignored no matter how much you’re told to “tough it out.”
Julia Fox as Elsie White, Isaiah’s wife, is pure chaos energy. She’s this pale, otherworldly presence with bleached hair and eyebrows, and she seems to exist in her own reality. The film uses her almost like a ghost, a harbinger of how wrong everything is. When she finally gets acknowledged on screen, it’s almost like the movie is winking at its own absurdity.
And then there’s the occult stuff. Pentagrams. Ritual sacrifices. Blood as a “gift from the gods.” Freemasonry symbols. The film leans hard into the idea that Isaiah’s success isn’t just from talent or training—it’s from literal deals with dark forces. The owners of the Saviors appear at the end in pig masks (because football = pigskin, get it?), revealing that Cam’s father sold him to this demonic sports cult before he even had a choice.
This supernatural horror? This I could follow. It’s absurd, over-the-top, and yet it felt like the film finally speaking a language I understood.
The Religious Imagery: Sledgehammer Subtlety
One thing reviewers kept mentioning was how heavy-handed the religious metaphors are, and they’re not wrong. The marketing literally posed Tyriq Withers in a Christ-on-the-cross position, holding footballs instead of nails in his hands. The tagline: “Greatness demands sacrifice.”
The film is drowning in this imagery. Last Supper compositions. Crucifixes. Isaiah as both savior and devil. The team is called the Saviors, for crying out loud. Cam’s journey is framed as a twisted resurrection narrative—he “dies” (career-ending injury), descends into hell (Isaiah’s compound), and is “reborn” (supposedly as the next great quarterback, if he signs the contract).
But here’s the thing: I didn’t mind the heavy-handedness. Maybe because I wasn’t bogged down trying to parse football metaphors, the religious allegory felt like solid ground. The film is asking: What do we worship? What sacrifices do we demand from our heroes? When does dedication become cultish devotion?
Isaiah explicitly compares himself to God. He’s brought “salvation to the people” through football. The fans worship him. The system requires blood sacrifice—literally, in the film’s logic, but also metaphorically in how it destroys young athletes. Cam wears a crucifix, and Isaiah tries to remake him in his own image.
It’s not subtle. But at least I could grab onto it.
Cam’s Journey: The Protagonist I Couldn’t Quite Connect With
This might be the film’s biggest problem for me: I never really got inside Cam’s head. Tyriq Withers does good work with what he’s given—the physicality alone is impressive, and there’s something genuinely vulnerable about watching him stripped bare (literally, in several scenes) and broken down. But the script doesn’t give us enough of his internal life.
Why does he stay? Why does he keep accepting the abuse? The film wants us to believe it’s because of his obsessive need to honor his dead father’s dream, to become the G.O.A.T. But we barely know his father. We barely know him. His mother, brother, and girlfriend are introduced early and then essentially disappear from the narrative, as if the film forgot they existed.
Critics called him “frustratingly opaque” and “cobbled together out of sketchy clichés,” and I felt that. There’s a difference between a character making questionable decisions because of understandable desperation versus making them because the plot needs him to. Too often, Cam felt like the latter. He witnesses horrific violence, clear evidence that something is deeply wrong, and then just… goes along with it. Has a friendly dinner with Isaiah like nothing happened.
The film hints that his brain injury might be causing hallucinations, that maybe nothing we’re seeing is entirely real. That’s a compelling idea, but it’s never developed enough to create genuine uncertainty or psychological depth. Instead, it just adds another layer of confusion.
The Ending: When Cam Said “Nah”
After all my confusion, frustration, and multiple pause breaks, the ending is what finally clicked for me. And honestly? It was awesome.
The owners reveal themselves, demand that Cam sign the contract to become the next sacrifice in their demonic football cult. They threaten his family. They call him “boy”—a racial slur that makes the power dynamics sickeningly clear. This is about control, exploitation, the commodification of Black bodies in service of wealthy white owners’ profits.
And Cam just… snaps.
He refuses to sign. Then he goes on an absolutely brutal rampage, killing Elsie, the owners, and the masked attacker (revealed to be both Isaiah and his trainer, somehow). He uses a hammer and a sword, imagery that calls back to gladiators, to warriors, to the idea that if they want violence, he’ll give them violence—but on his own terms.
One owner is dragged into a pentagram and destroyed by an unseen force. Cam walks out of the compound, covered in blood, past the masked cheerleaders, and into the desert. He walks away from everything.
This ending worked because it’s the moment Cam finally becomes an active participant in his own story rather than a passive victim. He rejects the cult of football, the system that wanted to devour him. He says “nah” to all of it—the fame, the glory, the sacrifice, the whole mythology. And there’s something deeply satisfying about watching him burn it all down.
(There are alternate endings floating around—one where he did sign the contract and won the Super Bowl for the Saviors, and another where he joined a different team and won without any demonic help. The ambiguity might drive some people crazy, but I appreciate that the film doesn’t neatly resolve whether escape is even possible.)
The Bigger Picture: What Was This Movie Even About?
After finishing Him and doing some research, I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. The film throws so many themes at the wall that it’s hard to tell which ones it actually wants to explore deeply:
- Toxic masculinity and the psychological toll of sports: Isaiah’s “radical detachment,” his complete sacrifice of everything human in service of being the best. The film suggests you have to be a psychopath to succeed at that level.
- The commodification of Black athletes: Cam’s body is literally measured, poked, prodded, and injected with substances. He’s livestock being prepared for market.
- Cult-like fan culture: Those masked figures outside the compound, the fans who scream “WE DON’T WANT YOU!” because no one could possibly replace their god.
- Parental pressure and generational trauma: Cam’s father arranged all of this before his death, signing his son up for damnation in pursuit of glory.
- CTE and brain injuries: The film keeps coming back to Cam’s head injury, the X-rays showing bleeding and damage, the question of cognitive impairment.
- The violence inherent in American football: Every hit, every tackle, every “sacrifice” adds up to broken bodies and broken minds.
The problem, as many critics noted, is that the film introduces all these ideas but doesn’t really dig into most of them. It’s more interested in presenting themes than exploring them. The result feels scattered, overstuffed, like it’s trying to be too many movies at once.
Justin Tipping said in interviews that he wanted to examine “what happens when the athlete becomes the commodity,” exploring the horror of being reduced to your physical capital. That’s a powerful idea, and there are moments when Him really nails it. But those moments are buried under so much other stuff—the supernatural elements, the psychological thriller aspects, the body horror, the satire—that nothing gets the breathing room it deserves.
The Technical Stuff: Style Over Substance?
One thing I can say definitively: Him looks incredible. Kira Kelly’s cinematography is often stunning, with high-contrast lighting that makes everything feel like a fever dream. The production design of Isaiah’s compound—brutalist, raw, built in the wings of an actual football stadium—creates this oppressive atmosphere that’s part prison, part temple, part slaughterhouse.
The editing is frenetic, almost overwhelming. Quick cuts, flashing lights, those X-ray visions interrupting the narrative flow. Some people found it effective; others thought it was just chaos. I’m somewhere in the middle. When it worked, it put you inside Cam’s fractured mental state. When it didn’t, it felt like the film didn’t trust its own story, using style to cover for substance.
The soundtrack is similarly all over the place—classical, rap, pop, dramatic orchestral swells. Sometimes it’s perfectly calibrated to create dread; other times, it’s bizarrely loud over dialogue or feels completely mismatched to what’s happening on screen.
Marlon Wayans, though. Man. This might be his best dramatic performance. He’s genuinely terrifying as Isaiah, bringing this shark-eyed intensity and charisma that makes you understand why people would worship him even as he destroys them. The fact that he’s primarily known for comedy makes the casting even more effective—there’s this uncanny valley quality to watching him play someone this dark.
Final Thoughts: A Beautiful, Frustrating Mess
Him is the definition of an ambitious failure—or maybe an imperfect success, depending on your perspective. It’s trying to do something genuinely original, using horror to interrogate American sports culture in ways that feel risky and transgressive. The fact that Universal Pictures, which broadcasts Sunday Night Football, greenlit this movie is kind of remarkable.
But ambition isn’t the same as execution. The film is so dense with ideas, so committed to its surreal aesthetic, that it becomes difficult to connect with on an emotional level—especially if you’re not deeply embedded in football culture. I can see why it’s divided audiences so sharply. It’s currently sitting at a 5.1 on IMDb and 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics calling it everything from “absolutely incredible” to “a failure” to “circus-level absurdity.”
For me, watching Him was like being in a foreign country where I only speak a little of the language. I caught enough to follow the basic plot, and there were moments of genuine horror and power that transcended my lack of football knowledge. The ending, with Cam rejecting the entire system, felt earned and cathartic.
But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a whole other layer to this movie that I just couldn’t access. For someone who lives and breathes football, who understands the culture, the pressures, the mythology—maybe Him hits completely differently. Maybe it’s the horror film about sports that we needed.
Or maybe it’s just a messy, overstuffed film that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be.
Either way, I’m glad Cam said “nah.” Because by the end, that felt like the only sane response to everything the film threw at us. Sometimes the only way to win a rigged game is to walk away from it entirely.
Even if you don’t fully understand the game in the first place.
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