Him Misses the Mark

            For my money, Jordan Peele is one of the biggest and best names in horror out there today. His unique sense of style, mood, and timing, combined with his fresh take on long-established tropes and social commentary, makes him one of today’s greatest voices in horror. When I saw his name attached, at least as a producer, to Him, I was intrigued.

            Him follows Cameron “Cam” Cade (Tyriq Withers), a number one draft pick fresh out of college who some are already saying has the potential to be the greatest quarterback of all time. The Saviors, a fictional team in a fictional football league clearly standing in for the NFL, is apparently eyeing him and sends him to train with nearly-retired quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), who happens to be Cam’s childhood hero. He goes to Isaiah’s remote, creepy compound (it looks more like the kind of place a Sith Lord might be found hiding out) and embarks on a “training regimen full of extremely bizarre, punishing rituals, each one seeming to suggest that something other than football is going on here, and that there are strange forces behind Isaiah White and the Saviors. Well, without spoilers, this is a horror film after all, it turns out there is, all revealed in a series of Jordan Peele/M. Night Shyamalan-esque twists.   

            Him was not well-received by critics and fans, and upon watching it, I can understand why. There are some things that are just silly and unnecessary, like the X-Ray effects showing the injuries happening in the body when people are taking hits, to the inconsistent portrayal by Wayans in a constant back and forth of is-he-or-isn’t-he a good guy and mentor to Cam or some kind of sinister psychopath out to sabotage Cam’s prospects.  The filmmakers attempt to create a genre-bending picture here, but they end up bending it to the point of breaking.

            Ultimately, the biggest problem with Him is that it’s a movie at war with itself, an interesting concept with lots of potential that ends up being an overcrowded mess of narrative threads, scenes that give the audience tried and true genre tropes, and others that turn them upside down. It’s a story in which you’re not sure who you should be rooting for; is it young, fish-out-of-water Cam Cade, a young man who, against doctor’s orders after a vicious attack by a mystery man in which he suffered a brain injury, endures Isaiah’s constant hazing for the sake of his lifetime dream and making his father proud. Is it Isaiah himself? Is he the mirror image of who Cam is to be – cynical, broken, brutal? And what kind of movie is it? Is it a sports film? A horror film? A comedy, even a satire? At the end of the day, I think it is all of the above, the result of which is a film that feels like a patchwork of concepts stitched together, and that’s unfortunate, because the film had tremendous potential.

            The story grapples with a lot: the price of fame; the insatiable desire of the fans for blood; the way we treat our athletes and how their bodies and their lives are offered up for our entertainment; even some racial issues. There are also clever plays on some mythological and folkloric tropes which, in my mind, could have used some more development. As it is, the Big Reveal at the end is akin to a Rosemary’s Baby twist, one that is thrown at you from out of nowhere. And then there’s the outrageous, uber-gory climax, a scene in which it is hard to tell whether or not the filmmakers included it as a payoff to gore hounds or as the scene where it flirts most with satire.

            Some good acting, a good stylistic look, and some creepiness that recalls some of Peele’s trademarks (he is only a producer on the film, not the writer or director), the film ends up feeling like the chaotic, smashmouth game at its center.