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Justin Tipping's second feature, the Jordan Peele-produced psychological and supernatural thriller "Him," is a film that demands to be seen through squinted eyes and a deeply cynical lens, much like the brutal American institution it skewers. From its sleek, almost unnervingly beautiful digital cinematography to a tense, throbbing electronic score by Bobby Krlic, the movie is a technically brilliant, relentlessly stylized descent into the toxic core of professional football. This isn't just a sports movie with horror elements; it is, in the self-indulgent but here entirely warranted term, "elevated horror" that weaponizes the very spectacle of the gridiron, twisting competitive ambition into a quasi-occult ritual of self-mutilation and Faustian bargains. Tipping, handpicked by Peele on the strength of his 2016 debut Kicks, doesn't offer a critique as much as a vivisection, ensuring that audiences will never again view the Sunday spectacle of staged combat without a shiver of true dread.
The narrative centers on Cameron "Cam" Cade, portrayed with a kind of chiseled, statue-like naiveté by Tyriq Withers, a college star with a singular, inherited mission: to become the greatest American football player of all time, the eponymous G.O.A.T. His rival and dark mentor in this quest is the current title-holder, Isaiah White, brought to life by Marlon Wayans in a performance of chilling, predatory intensity, a veteran quarterback whose body and mind have clearly been ravaged by the price of his glory. Cam, conditioned from a young age by his late father's gospel of "sacrifice," believes in a straight, honest path to success—God, family, then football—a set of priorities utterly foreign to the morally bankrupt reality of the pro game. This naiveté is immediately tested and warped after a concussive ambush by a figure in a goat costume, an injury that doesn't just threaten his career but also becomes the distorting prism through which the rest of the film's terrors are filtered.
Tipping leverages this head trauma masterfully; so much of what follows—the relentless paranoia, the unsettling hallucinations of masked figures, the sudden, casual violence—is experienced as a terrifying subjective reality. The blow Cam sustains early on is not merely a plot point but a liability, reminding the audience constantly of the physical cost of the sport, a sport where crippling concussions come with the turf. It's a liability that Cam, egged on by his slick, amoral agent Tom (a perfectly slimy Tim Heidecker), chooses to ignore in pursuit of the ultimate contract. The plot accelerates when Isaiah, on the cusp of retirement, invites Cam to his remote, Brutalist-meets-Bond-villain lair in the Texas desert, ostensibly for training. What follows is a week-long, psychedelic boot camp that is less about conditioning and more about breaking Cam's psyche.
The training itself is an expressionist nightmare: a jugs machine repeatedly smashing a player in the face, headbutting drills that redefine brutality, and the covert injection of Isaiah's blood, which Cam is led to believe is a mere energy booster. The film is literally drenched in the stuff—a terrifying visual metaphor for the literal and figurative blood transfusions required to perpetuate the legacy of the G.O.A.T. lineage. When Cam meets Isaiah's wife, the seductive and cynical Elsie (Julia Fox), and eventually stumbles into the Saviors’ secret party—complete with owners in literal pigskins—the narrative sheds all pretense of realism. The horror shifts from the psychological toll of ambition to the sickening reveal of a corporate, almost Lovecraftian conspiracy: the G.O.A.T.s are not just great players; they are manufactured through ritualistic blood transfer, a chillingly effective symbol of the way the pro sports industry literally consumes and recycles its warriors.
Him doesn't bother hiding its themes beneath a schlocky surface. Cam, frequently shirtless or naked, is presented as both a hero and a specimen, an object to be admired, controlled, and ultimately consumed. The film is littered with disconcerting situations—from the mascot attack to the severed head of the team doctor—but it resists a strictly literal reading. It's a metaphorical body horror, heightened by flashing X-rays and CG renderings of fractured bones, that asks: What are you willing to sacrifice?
The film's chaotic, bloody climax sees Cam choose a different kind of sacrifice. After bludgeoning Isaiah to death, he refuses to sign the contract presented by the masked owners, realizing his own father was complicit in arranging his entry into this demonic lineage. In a violent, cathartic outburst, Cam turns the tables, slaying Elsie, the owners, and the masked trainer, before Tom is literally dragged into a pentagram and destroyed. The ambiguity of the multiple alternate endings only reinforces the film's critical stance: whether Cam signs the deal or not, whether he wins a Super Bowl through the ritual or without it, the unseen, insidious forces of professional ambition and corporate exploitation will continue to follow him. Him is less a conventional story and more a visceral, ultra-stylized portrait of a nation’s obsession turned malignant. It may have struggled at the box office and divided critics, but as a visceral, terrifying exploration of the cost of the American dream, it leaves an undeniably nasty, unforgettable mark. This is a cold, hard look at the game, not the player, and it is unflinching in its assessment of what it takes to be "Him."
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