Universal Pictures is trying to make you believe that Jordan Peele is behind one of the most profoundly ill-conceived movies of 2025, HIM. In a way, this marketing tactic has been effective.
From movie stars to even cinema chains, many seem to believe that Peele, the man who brought us the modern horror classics Get Out, Us, and Nope, would deliver such a terrible, contemptuous piece of work. His detractors might think this is likely to happen, yet, in reality, he had nothing to do with the film other than backing it up as a producer through his Monkeypaw label. The brunt of the blame for such a terrible movie falls to Justin Tipping, whose idea for a horror movie related to football is decent in isolation, but leaves much to be desired in its execution.
The one thing that immediately unmasks the movie as “not directed by Jordan Peele” is in its image-making. Whatever you think about Peele’s movies, each image he crafts holds enough tangible meaning to be painstakingly scrutinized and explored through different avenues. How he analyzes his own frames, through the prism of IMAX cameras (within the diegesis of his movie and outside of it), in Nope, can lead anyone who mildly understands the film medium to examine the movie from many perspectives.
HIM wants to have these same sensibilities, with an IMAX-shot cold open, or aesthetic flourishes that teeter from dreamlike to “trippy." However, none of what Tipping stages, with the aid of cinematographer Kira Kelly, means anything.
The opening scene of the movie is shot for IMAX, simply because it looks cool. There’s no meaning or intent to the cold relationship between protagonist Cameron “Cam” Cade (Tyriq Withers) and his father (Don Benjamin), who forces him at a young age to watch the severe, bone-breaking injury that could’ve undoubtedly ended legendary quarterback Isaiah White’s (Marlon Wayans) career.
Real men make sacrifices, he says to Cam, and the ultimate approach for anyone to go far in life is to remember the mantra, “No guts. No glory.” Cam is conditioned by his father to be the next White—the Greatest of All Time (or GOAT), if you will—if he trains hard and attains the same level of success as his favorite football star now enjoys.
Yet, the cinematography doesn’t respond to anything I’ve just said. The camera swerves around the room, in a total sense of cacophony, with no focal point of attention that makes Tipping internalize exactly what being the GOAT means for a young Cameron Cade.
We don’t even have time to dwell on this because Tipping's mile-a-minute art film quickly moves into the present day, where the protagonist receives the opportunity of a lifetime to train with Isaiah White, who is thinking of retiring after the upcoming football season ends. Cam was the recent victim of an attack by a deranged fan, who cracked his skull and left an injury that could permanently bring an end to his burgeoning football career before it even begins.
Interesting ideas barely explored through meaningless frames in HIM
One could think HIM would be about Cam trying to push himself to prove he’s the GOAT, while suffering from the effects of a severe head injury that has inflamed his brain so much that sheer contact could potentially kill him. However, that’s the last time you’ll hear about it, even during scenes of close physical contact, where "X-Ray" views of brains physically clashing on each other are shown.
That’s right, most of the plotlines and thematic beats that are introduced in Tipping’s fragmented story are quickly dropped to make room for more “insane” imagery, where Cameron loses his mind as he may or may not realize that Isaiah holds secrets of his own, in the same vein as another bad film about celebrity worshipping which came out this year, Mark Anthony Green’s Opus.
While the latter primarily discussed online culture in the music industry, the same “eerie” beats, where something dark is lurking beneath the surface of the legendary celebrity’s compound, and grand guignol-esque finale are found in both movies, without fault. To Opus’ credit, at least its ideas are a teensy more developed than anything in HIM, and the images hold a bit more significance than Tipping’s aesthetic exercise in doing cool-looking things simply because it looks great projected on an IMAX screen.
The biggest exemplification of how meaningless the film is occurs near the end, where Tipping and Kelly recreate Leonardo Da Vinci’s "The Last Supper," with Cameron at the center of the table, because the timeless piece holds a great shot. If you didn’t know what “HIM” meant, the under-explained metaphor is now right at your fingertips!
It’s a film so undercooked and blandly written that, as ambiguous and hyper-stylized as it tries to be—dividing each day Cam spends with Isaiah into six distinct chapters—Tipping eventually has to explain everything for the audience to grasp what exactly he’s talking about. A confident filmmaker (i.e., Jordan Peele) wouldn’t do that because the images of their pictures would speak for themselves, or would point the audience in several directions.
There’s nothing to hold onto in HIM, apart from an impassioned, dramatic performance from Marlon Wayans, that makes us want to dissect the movie critically, because Tipping doesn’t provide audiences with the satisfaction of interpreting his illogical story through his (lack of) craftsmanship.
I’ll give credit to costume designer Dominique Dawson, who understood the assignment more than anyone else and crafted a diverse array of creative looks for the movie’s protagonists and supporting characters, including Julia Fox, who portrays Isaiah’s wife, Elsie. However, the film itself completely falls apart by the time it reaches its climax, where Kelly’s blocking becomes entirely unintelligible as Cam directly goes head-to-head with his idol in a fight scene so terrible that it removes any ounce of “goodwill” that HIM might have had when it began. Then it gets into exploitation territory, in a blood-splattering epilogue that attempts to tie the movie’s story with spiritually-charged images.
However, like any of its previous plotlines, none of its admittedly interesting ideas go anywhere. It results in a promising, yet misguided and aesthetically empty horror movie that’s best left to be traded by another, better director with something to say through their images, rather than being drafted as the brilliant film Tipping likely believes it is…
Get the latest movie reviews, news, and more with FlickSided.