Studio:   Universal Pictures
Director: Justin Tipping
Writer:   Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers, Justin Tipping
Producer: Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Ian Cooper, Jamal Watson
Stars:    Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, Indira G. Wilson, Naomi Grossman

Review Score:

Summary:

A rising-star quarterback enters a dark underworld when training sessions with his idolized mentor reveal a sinister conspiracy.

Synopsis:

Despite seemingly suffering a career-ending injury during the game, superstar quarterback Isaiah White leads the San Antonio Saviors football team to victory in the USFF LXVII Championship. Watching the game with his football-obsessed son Cam, Cameron Cade Sr. uses Isaiah’s gritty performance as more motivation for Cam to develop into a resilient champion like his idol Isaiah.

Over the next 14 years, Isaiah leads the Saviors to seven more titles while Cam becomes the top prospect in college football under his father’s stern discipline. Following his father’s death, Cam confronts rising fame with his mother Yvette, brother Drew, girlfriend Jasmine, and agent Tom, who also represents Isaiah White, at his side.

While practicing alone on his former high school’s football field, someone disguised as a horned figure attacks Cam. The resulting head trauma coupled with increasing external pressures causes Cam to miss the USFF scouting combine, jeopardizing his favored status as Isaiah’s potential successor in the event of Isaiah’s rumored retirement.

As an alternative to get the San Antonio Saviors to scout Cam, Tom arranges for him to train with Isaiah at Isaiah’s remote desert compound. On his ride into the sprawling facility, Cam passes a throng of cult-like fans, one of whom, Marjorie, is so obsessed with Isaiah that she spits at Cam over potentially replacing her hero. Upon his arrival, Isaiah confiscates Cam’s cellphone and instructs him to abstain from sex as he is cut off from his girlfriend and family to focus solely on football.

DAY I - FUN

Cam and Isaiah bond during ordinary training exercises. Isaiah introduces his sports medicine doctor Marco, who begins giving Cam daily injections of an unspecified substance. In addition to briefly meeting Isaiah’s socialite wife Elsie, Cam observes that Isaiah regularly receives peculiar blood infusions.

DAY II – POISE

During passing drills, Cam is shocked when, whenever he misses a timed throw, a passing machine fires a football at full speed into a willing participant’s face as a way to motivate Cam to perform better. Despite the alarming situation, Cam begins growing accustomed to Isaiah’s unusual training methods due to his desire to impress his idol and develop into a champion.

DAY III – LEADERSHIP

Isaiah uses condescension and insults about his deceased father to motivate Cam, whose head injury is further exacerbated after a hard hit. Cam badly injures another practice participant with a violent helmet-to-helmet collision, but Isaiah expresses pride by encouraging Cam to be ruthlessly aggressive.

Suffering from frightening visions like being literally suffocated by aggressive paparazzi, Cam sneaks a phone call to his mother and brother. The call is interrupted by a drunk Marco, who cryptically mutters about how well he has prepared Cam before giving Cam something to swallow.

During a sauna session, Isaiah advises Cam to be better than him by finding his own path to greatness. Once Isaiah leaves him alone, crazed fan Marjorie sneaks into the sauna to attack Cam. Cam defends himself by choking out Marjorie with his bare hands. Isaiah reenters and kills Marjorie by thrusting her into a wall that smashes her head. Afterward, Marco mops up the sauna while two other cultish fans collect Marjorie’s body as Isaiah uses her death as an example of the devotion Cam should exhibit.

Despite Isaiah’s insistence on abstinence, Isaiah’s wife Elsie convinces Cam to join her provocative girlfriends for the night. In the morning, Isaiah confronts Cam at gunpoint about possibly sleeping with his wife. Cam denies having sex with Elsie, but admits to cheating on his girlfriend, prompting Isaiah to tell Cam he should never care about hurting anyone else’s feelings.

DAY IV - RESILIENCE

Isaiah takes Cam target shooting. Isaiah tries to make a wager with Cam’s youth as the prize, but Cam turns the tables on Isaiah’s control by indicating he is coming after Isaiah’s job. Cam also continues taking Marco’s injections and growing increasingly comfortable with the routines at Isaiah’s compound.

DAY V – VISION

Isaiah hosts a media day for Cam. In an interview, Cam weeps about how he disappointed his father by telling him he no longer wanted to play football prior to his death, but he now continues playing as a way to cope and fulfill his father’s wishes.

Elsie escorts Cam into town for a strange underground celebration where he meets the San Antonio Saviors’ owner. Marco whispers “run” into Cam’s ear. After Cam confirms to his agent Tom that he’s ready to take the next step, Cam, Tom, and team executives drink blood from goblets. Cam then has a disorienting experience during which he sees Elsie behead Marco.

DAY VI – SACRIFICE

Cam wakes up back at the compound in crippling pain while receiving a blood infusion. Cam recovers by taking an injection that Marco labeled with the word “run.”

Cam accuses Isaiah of forcibly infusing him with Isaiah’s blood. Isaiah reveals Cam was actually given the blood of Isaiah’s mentor, from whom he inherited the mantle of the San Antonio Saviors’ star quarterback. Isaiah further explains that the team’s quarterbacks have a long history of being infused with their predecessor’s blood to become “The Chosen One,” and he gave Cam his mentor’s blood so they would be evenly matched in their duel to the death to be this season’s starting QB.

Cam and Isaiah engage in a brutal physical fight. Isaiah savagely breaks Cam’s non-throwing arm, but Cam viciously beats Isaiah to death with a football helmet.

Covered in blood, Cam emerges onto a football field flanked by cheerleaders and lavishly dressed guardians who lead him to a dais where Tom and San Antonio Saviors executives wear masks while seated in thrones. Elsie presents a contract for Cam to sign that will complete his ritualistic indoctrination in their occult conspiracy.

When Cam hesitates to sign the contract, Tom grows infuriated and reveals Cam had been groomed for this role since childhood, and he was deliberately attacked so he could be isolated and drafted by the Saviors. The team owner threatens to murder Cam’s family if he doesn’t do as he’s told.

Cam grabs one of the ceremonial weapons and begins killing everyone. Elsie tries to attack Cam, but she trips and falls, puncturing her own throat with her knife. Cam beheads the owner. Tom becomes supernaturally stuck inside a massive occult symbol on the ground. With the ritual left incomplete, Cam walks away smiling as Tom explodes in a burst of blood.

Review:

As a football-obsessed little boy, Cam Cade grew up idolizing superstar quarterback Isaiah White. So much so that Cam’s father Cam Sr., a stereotypical parent unhealthily invested in his young son’s sports future, used Isaiah’s gritty performance in the USFF’s LXVII Championship to inspire Cam to be just as determined to become the next GOAT.

Dad’s dream drove Cam for the next 14 years, compelling the kid to be laser-focused on football at the expense of everything else. Cam did develop into the country’s top college prospect, but the pressure became so much to bear that he gave up the game, which devastated his dad. After Cam Sr. died in disappointment, Cam recommitted himself to fulfilling his father’s wish, and he now uses football to cope in spite of the toll it takes on his physical and mental wellbeing.

Even in death, the inescapable influence of his father continues coloring every move Cam makes. Whether he’s weeping in an interview about how dad’s encouragement pushed him or reflecting on the legacy he desperately hopes to build in Cam Sr.’s honor, the only figure looming larger in Cam’s life is Isaiah White, the celebrity athlete whose mantle Cam now hopes to inherit.

Weighing how critical his father has been and still is, it’s a decidedly bizarre move for “Him” to tell rather than show all of the above when its canvas is a visual medium. Over and over again, insults about dad’s demise are used to push Cam’s performance, or guilt him toward certain directions. Yet the only time Cam’s father is shown outside of a photograph is a single flashback in the prologue, making it incredibly difficult to recognize the significance of the man’s importance when he’s mostly referenced as a word and rarely seen on the screen.

Maybe reducing Cam Sr.’s visible role keeps the spotlight on Isaiah White as the movie’s main villain. After someone in a horned monster costume assaults him, Cam suffers a head injury that compels him to drop out of the USFF’s scouting combine. Dreams of being drafted aren’t done yet though. To Cam’s delight, he receives an unexpected invite to train with his hero Isaiah at the legend’s remote desert compound, further fueling speculation that Cam could be next in line for greatness if Isaiah’s rumored retirement happens.

That’s where things get weird for Cam. Almost immediately, a supposed sports medicine doctor played by an oddly cast Jim Jefferies starts giving Cam unknown injections. Brutal workout sessions that reward ruthless aggression become daily activities. And even though the entire experience only encompasses six days, Cam becomes unusually accustomed to the unnecessary violence and strange blood infusions in under 48 hours, even as hints of a dark conspiracy suggest his new mentor might have sinister motives.

This is also where things get weird for the audience, for entirely different reasons. “Him’s” metaphors are so on the nose, they violently smash into a viewer’s face like the fast-flying footballs launched at a willing participant’s head during one of the film’s signature scenes. Exactly what those metaphors mean, on the other hand, is a mystery not even Benoit Blanc could solve, partly because Rian Johnson’s intuitive detective wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near such an embarrassingly trivial movie.

“Him” overstuffs itself on a religious motif that is so hammily handled, it could be served for Easter dinner. Isaiah plays for the San Antonio Saviors. Cam’s family loves them so much, they appropriate a nativity scene to create a shrine that includes bobbleheads of team mascots. When reporters surround Cam during a media day, everyone is arranged to mirror the layout of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” with Cam in the center seat. Scene breakdowns have Roman numeral headers. The star quarterback is considered “The Chosen One.” On and on it goes.

The parallels are easy to see. Their purposes are not. Does “Him” have anything more insightful to say about false idolatry other than a simplistic suggestion that Sunday should be reserved for worshipping Jesus instead of gridiron athletes?

Several times, CGI morphs humans into x-rayed skeletons wearing football uniforms to highlight the bone-breaking results of brutal collisions, as though expecting to surprise a viewer with the revelation that contact sports are dangerous. During a haunting vision of being swarmed by flashbulb-popping paparazzi, a piece of plastic literally suffocates Cam in another unsubtle illustration of celebrities becoming commodities. Presumably done deliberately, the team owner is never named, parroting a common criticism that sports abuse athletes for the benefit of rich old men acting as unknown puppet masters.

Reasonable minds agree these are valid criticisms worthy of discussion. But “Him” avoids contributing meaningfully to that discourse, content instead to cursorily depict common observations that are plainly obvious, without developing any depth that might prevent the accompanying horror of butchered bodies and fanatical cults from being insultingly shallow.

Summing up the movie’s “no duh” declarations: Violence as entertainment is bad. Exploitation is bad. Feverish fanaticism is bad. “Him” is also bad.

The comical pileup of empty messages is far too silly for the movie’s hollow preaching to be taken seriously. “Sports horror” has too few entries to warrant its own subgenre, but nobody has to see any other such film to believe “Him” must be the worst one in that niche.

Review Score: 25