Directed By Justin Tipping

Starring – Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans, Julia Fox

The Plot – Cam (Withers) is A young athlete who descends into a world of terror when he’s invited to train with a legendary champion (Wayans), whose charisma curdles into something darker and depraved than the up-and-coming star could’ve ever imagined.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, adult language throughout, sexual material, nudity and some drug use.

HIM – Official Trailer (2025) Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers

POSITIVES

Summoning a sensorial spectacle of hypnotically entrancing imagery, Justin Tipping directs the hell out of this film, articulating the dark and depraved underlining of such a brutally barbaric game with its own moral and ethical elasticity to those who have partaken in it. Considering this is only Tipping’s Sophomore directing effort, after 2016’s “Kicks”, it’s truly remarkable the magnitude of visual intoxicating that he enacts to such a darkly foreboding underworld of past time traditionalism, with strangely surreal iconography that revels in impeccable lighting schemes and immersive framing techniques, but also expressively intrusive editing that intentionally illustrate the randomness and contextual incoherence of athletic brain trauma, crafting an uneasy dysphoria to the audience that unlocks the realm of possibilities to anything that we’re experiencing in this seemingly never-ending nightmare of strange bewilderment, growing all the more epically imaginative and lucidly distorting with each passing minute. Sight is matched seamlessly with sound in the depths of the stylistic presentation, as Bobby Krlic’s rhythmically endearing electronic compositions breed such stirringly persisting pulse to the integral ingredients of Tipping’s toxic atmosphere, featuring a lot of instrumental tangibility that seamlessly pursue and expand what the tracks are accompanying on-screen, enlisting a music video-like captivity to the interpretation, and though this isn’t Krlic’s first time channeling the coldly callous vibes of horror, as he was also the composer on films such as “Midsommar” and “Beau is Afraid”, here his work feels like it holds the most consistently lasting impact on the integrity of the scenes, and considering the stylistic substance is the movie’s most commanding aspect, a lot of the praise for such compelling artistry belongs to the visionary who scored such frantically frenetic visuals, even if the actions of the film feel like they’re constantly working against his creative efforts. Beyond a mastery of aesthetic touches, the film features such committedly candid performances from Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans, who each enact a compelling duality to their respective characters, in ways that constantly transform them emotionally before our very eyes. While Withers already looks the part with a physical look that effortlessly feeds into the preconceived expectations of an athletic appearance, it’s ultimately his emotional evolution alongside such a lavish lifestyle that unlocks the superstar swagger to his various deliveries, taking him from this once tepidly tender and starstruck idolizer to this confidently confrontational understudy ready to tackle the throne, with only Wayans’ Isaiah standing in his way. Wayans hands in what is easily his best performance since 2000’s “Requiem For a Dream”, conveying a jealously bitter and abrasive aging veteran with his own seedy intentions, and though his unpredictable outbursts of fiery intensity occasionally produced unintentional laughter to the execution of a scene or sequence, Marlon is constantly giving his all to bring out the detestability of such an egotistical character, manifesting the uncontrollable side to success that feels like the humiliating side of Michael Jordan pushed to eleven.

NEGATIVES

While “Him” does feature a lot of stylistic stimulation to the movie’s presentation, its substance falls entirely flat in everything that it’s attempting in its exploration, leading to one of the most frustratingly embarrassing scripts that I have seen enacted all year. I say frustrating because there’s a lot of thematic ambition exercised within the many talking points of the conversations, with everything from black youth grooming, to shallow fandom, to obviously the imperfect quest to perfection, each surmising such fascinating elements to a world that only so few of us will ever have the access to experience, however they’re all merely just shallow one-off observations to the film’s bigger picture, without any semblance of a further discussion or uncovered angle to value them as a meaningful aspect of the film’s execution, with some of its most honest and heartfelt interactions between Cam and Isaiah attaining the kind of heart that is practically screaming to get out, but never given enough time and patience to appropriately flesh out a depth to the commonalities that bind them. This is a common problem with the script, as much of the movie’s opening half lacks an intended objective or profoundness that can transcend the scattershot concepts into something more satisfyingly cerebral, and while some aspects become a bit clearer during it’s second half, it ultimately leads to a third act climax cluttered with so much unnecessary violence and brutality that I became a bit desensitized to the shock factor of the imagery, resulting in such an unsatisfyingly bizarre resolution that accomplishes nothing of redemption for any of the characters involved, serving as a metaphorical a testament to how little that I invested in a single one of them. It’s also the latest film to attempt a chapter structure to its storytelling, without any identifiable need for such an intention, and instead these abrupt divides that further convolute the film’s already inconsistent pacing. The five individual chapters pretty much obliterate any possibility of the movie maintaining any semblance of urgency to the narrative, but beyond that involve these titles that prematurely convey just where that section is headed, plaguing the film with the kind of predictability that could allow me to sleep casually throughout the film, and wake up feeling like I was still able to follow along. On top of this, my aforementioned praises for Tipping’s direction even come with a caveat of warning, as Justin lacks any semblance of subtlety in ways that often obliterate the transparency of its interactions, constantly dedicating itself to being a shocking horror film without any of the contextual relevance that grows measured tension into legitimate frights. If you can overlook such obvious instances like the football team being called the Saviors, or Illuminati triangles being plastered so forcefully in the framing of the imagery, you will be subjected to some of the most laughably bad dialogue that supplanted no shortage of laughter to my engagement, and while the movie fails miserably at being an effective horror film, full of effective frights and uncomfortable atmosphere, it succeeds unintentionally towards being the kind of embarrassing comedy that its stars will look back on in shame with what they’re asked to convince to the audience, making me wonder if executive producer, Jordan Peele, ever actually saw the movie that he was shepherding to the general public. The movie also revels in the opportunity to hand in another meaningless performance from Julia Fox, who after a spellbinding debut in “Uncut Gems”, now seems to be relegated to these bimbo-type turns that do nothing to show off her evidential range as an actress. Part of the problem here is that the script measures a complete lack of meaning or importance to her character, only allowing her to show back up into frame whenever a spontaneous conflict between Cam and Isaiah needs inspired, but even in chewing the scenery, her performance isn’t as memorable as the bizarre artificiality of her appearance, and it makes me wish the film would’ve removed the character entirely from the finished draft, in order to simultaneously feed to the sacrificial mentality of Isaiah’s will to be the best in his sport, especially considering she doesn’t change or influence the film in any integrally noticeable way to its finished product.

OVERALL
“Him” fumbles the expectations of its audience with a conceptually convoluted and ambiguously executed messaging that absolves the ambition of such an artistically entrancing director attempting his first film in nearly a decade. While the stimulating style of Tipping does attain music video iconography to such a transfixing degree, the script is sacked with an overall lack of intuition towards compelling characterization, subtly enacted frights, or tonal coherence to cleverly produce a winner under the heavily advertised Jordan Peele banner, and one controversy that (For once) the NFL had nothing to do with.

My Grade: 3.8 or F