With Jordan Peele attached as producer, Him instantly comes with the expectation that this psychological sports horror might be intricately crafted enough to dig more deeply into its themes — the price paid for fame and glory among them. After all, most sports-related movies are hopeful ones. But it isn’t a film directed by Peele, and so the layered execution and storytelling prowess are lost in what is, essentially, a thematically muddled horror that lacks the cohesion necessary to bring its story together.

Directed by Justin Tipping from a screenplay he co-wrote with Skip Bronkie and Zak Akers, Him has a lot to say about the world of football. The obsessive fans that border on cultish, the dismissiveness with which injuries are treated, and the pressure that comes with being the greatest of all time (the movie was initially titled Goat, and there are visual nods to actual goats, so you get the picture). If nothing else, the film is a cautionary tale about never meeting your heroes. It’s a shame, then, that these elements are treated haphazardly at best.

Marlon Wayans Delivers A Performance That Elevates Him

Though It Isn’t Enough To Make The Film A Worthwhile Watch

Marlon Wayans carries most of the movie’s weight as Isaiah White, a quarterback who’s considered the GOAT, and who’s thinking about retiring. For most of the film, Wayans’ performance feels as though it belongs in a better movie, one that matches the tension and intensity Him seems to think it’s giving. The actor is all forced smiles and barely controlled emotion, walking a fine line between passionate and unhinged. The way he treats Cameron Wade (Tyriq Withers), a rising quarterback who’s set to replace Isaiah and all he’s accomplished, is ruthless, though he believes he’s toughening him up.

The film is largely set at Isaiah’s compound, isolated from the rest of the world, so that the focus is on football. Once Cameron, who recently suffered a traumatic brain injury, enters and his phone is confiscated, things get really weird, yet Him can’t maintain its tone. It’s torn between being an eerie thriller and a psychological horror. The latter is heavily underutilized, undercutting the disconcerting elements of the story to a degree that we can’t take it as seriously as it wants us to.

The horror aspects have so much potential, but they’re wasted on a story that refuses to properly engage with its themes. At times subtle and at others too straightforward, the film leads to an ending that seems simultaneously inevitable and ill-conceived. It struggles to hold attention, even as Cameron’s time at the compound gets increasingly bizarre.

The material doesn’t help Withers’ Cameron, whose passivity and lack of curiosity make it hard to become attached to him or what the film’s attempting to imply with his character. It’s only in a few moments that Withers’ performance rises to the occasion, and that’s primarily in the first 20 minutes or so, when he plays Cameron as withdrawn enough to make us wonder whether he genuinely cares about football. It’s a payoff that comes near the end of the film, and one that would have been better served as its foundation.

Otherwise, the film tells us that Cameron cares about his family, but we barely see them. We learn his father (Don Benjamin) taught him everything he knows about football, but that relationship gets one moment onscreen. Further interrogation of Cameron and his life would have made the horror more unsettling. What we get instead is a tepid film that doesn’t entirely qualify as a psychological horror.

At several points, whether it’s Cameron being beaten up or helmets colliding on the field, the film employs an X-ray effect to underscore the impact of football on the body and mind; however, it’s used so often that it becomes ineffective. Moments that are meant to be scary come off as a bit gimmicky.

At a little over an hour and a half, Him is so imbalanced in its execution that it feels much longer. Tipping and his co-writers have a lot of great ideas and thought-provoking commentary about the way we treat athletes, but the lead-up to an admittedly explosive conclusion doesn’t land. Wayans and the score seem to be doing most of the tension-building. It’s a shame the rest of the film couldn’t rise to the same level.