Him (2025)

Here’s an odd mashup of sports movie and horror show, carrying on another one of today’s genre-blending exercises that don’t even seem possible. Jordan Peele is an executive producer. The main problem here is that sports movies tend to build toward sentimental heroic upbeat triumphs whereas horror is more like the opposite. Here the sport under examination is pro football, with obvious similarities to the NFL but equally obvious (for legal reasons?) departures from it. The featured team is the San Antonio Saviors—the unlikely nickname captures well the strange vibe of Him. Do any sports teams bear the nicknames of holy figures? I’m drawing a blank. The Los Angeles Angels? New Orleans Saints? San Diego Padres? Not quite the same. We’ve got a veteran quarterback in Him, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). He’s the GOAT, the greatest of all time. He’s won eight of the picture’s Super Bowl equivalent, as opposed, you can see, to Tom Brady’s seven. Frankly, I’m tired of the whole GOAT discourse, but here we are. The Saviors have drafted a promising rookie QB, Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers). This worries Isaiah, as Brady was worried when the New England Patriots drafted Jimmy Garoppolo (and Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love, etc.). Isaiah feels threatened and undermined as the starting QB, but shows he’s a good sport about it, in a way, voluntarily taking on mentorship of Cade. But is he really trying to help Cade? Really? It doesn’t seem that way. Things start to drift in strange directions at the remote training compound in the desert, where Isaiah comes on with the snarling drill sergeant style of turning boys into men by taunting and humiliating them. Cade is given transfusions of Isaiah’s blood. Things have been strange even before that, as some rando wearing a goat costume knocks Cade on the head, giving him a serious concussion and endangering his career. Him explores some of the psychedelic implications of concussions and brain injury, which can be visually striking, as in a showdown fight toward the end. But as the title suggests, however—this is not remotely like the movie Her, by the way—the capitalized “Him” is as much a religious reference as anything. Fans are worshippers and the movie goes spinning off to some majestically ridiculous Cthulhu type places in the end. The picture does not work, but it has its overheated moments along with a soundtrack that collects some nice jams. You could do worse.