{"id":13060,"date":"2025-09-19T19:53:26","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T23:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13060"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:51:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:51:27","slug":"him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/09\/19\/him\/","title":{"rendered":"Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Him <\/strong>(2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 96 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual material, nudity, some drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Justin Tipping\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers and Justin Tipping\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bobby Krlic\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Kira Kelly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 19, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jeffries, Naomi Grossman, GiGi Erneta, Norman Towns, Maurice Greene, Guapdad 4000, Tierra Whack.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0The director on record of the new horror-thriller Him<\/strong> is Justin Tipping. I have a sneaky (unconfirmed) suspicion producer Jordan Peele did all of the heavy lifting. It has his fingerprints all over it. If that\u2019s true, then he\u2019s basically giving audiences the middle finger with this muddled, incomprehensible, utterly meaningless pile of s***.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Peele started off strong with 2017\u2019s Get Out but has steadily gone downhill with his subsequent efforts, Us (2019) and Nope (2022). Him<\/strong> is him hitting rock bottom. Okay, maybe that place right before rock bottom. Wherever it sits, it\u2019s bad and not just bad. It\u2019s BAD in all caps. It wants us to think it\u2019s deep, but it has no idea what it wants to say. Consequently, it says nothing of any importance. The only statement it makes is Peele saying \u201cLook at what I can get away with! I can put my name on any piece of crap and Hollywood will make it happen! So there!\u201d It\u2019s as blatant a display of hubris as last spring\u2019s Weeknd vanity project Hurry Up Tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I couldn\u2019t get too much a read on the plot from the trailer. I figured seeing the movie would clear things up. NOPE! I\u2019m as much in the dark as I was when the trailer dropped over the summer. I\u2019ll give you what I\u2019ve got though.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cam Cade (Withers, I Know What You Did Last Summer) is destined for greatness on the football field. He\u2019s been groomed for it since childhood. His late father raised him with a \u201cno guts, no glory\u201d mindset. Unfortunately, his destiny is jeopardized by a serious TBI after he gets his head split open by somebody wearing a demonic costume. Is it really over for Cam? NOPE!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Things get back on track for Cam when he\u2019s invited to train with his idol, superstar QB Isaiah White (Wayans, Requiem for a Dream), at his private compound. The eight-time league champion plays for a team called the Saviors. He too came back from a debilitating injury. He sees potential for greatness in Cam. He promises he can make him the next GOAT. The compound is a weird place. It\u2019s more like a cult sanctuary than a training facility. Things get weird real fast. Isaiah\u2019s methods are, shall we say, unorthodox.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have no problem with weird movies. I am a huge fan of David Lynch. I don\u2019t have a problem with movies that don\u2019t make sense right away. Sometimes it\u2019s fun to put your mind to work. I do have a problem with movies that make no sense because they\u2019re not about anything. That\u2019s a perfect description of Him<\/strong>. It\u2019s what my parents would have called a \u201cput-on\u201d much like they did with the Antonioni film Blow-Up. It\u2019s filled with obvious religious references, but God only knows what any of it means. Is Tipping (or Peele) trying to say something about football being something like a religion in America? I have no freakin\u2019 idea. Is he trying to make some statement about hero worship? Damned if I know. I watched Him<\/strong> in a total state of confusion. I didn\u2019t know where it was going or if it even would go anywhere. I kept waiting for something to happen that would clear it all up. Eventually, I just stopped caring.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sometimes a bad movie is made slightly less terrible by decent acting. That is not the case with Him<\/strong>. It\u2019s made worse by the awful performances turned in by the cast. Withers has the range of a piece of driftwood. It looks like he took acting lessons from Channing Tatum. Wayans is totally miscast as the star athlete with a sinister secret. It\u2019s not like he can\u2019t do drama. He was amazing in Requiem for a Dream. He\u2019s amazingly bad here. Julia Fox, so good in Uncut Dreams, isn\u2019t any better as Isaiah\u2019s social media influencer wife. In fact, she\u2019s really annoying.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I want to talk about the credited director Justin Tipping for a moment. I don\u2019t know anything about him. He has only one other title to his credit (2016\u2019s Kicks) and I didn\u2019t see it. However, if Him<\/strong> is an actual representation of the caliber of his work, he might want to consider a career change. It is incompetent on every level. As for what I said about Peele being the actual director, it\u2019s just a theory in much the same way as a lot of people believe Steven Spielberg and not Tobe Hooper directed Poltergeist. Any way you look at it, the picture still stinks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The one thing stopping me from slapping Him<\/strong> with zero stars is the bloodbath at the very end. I won\u2019t go into detail, but it\u2019s something worthy of Grand Guignol with all the spurting blood. If only the rest of the movie showed this spirit. I\u2019ll grant that is has a certain energy, but it basically runs in place the entire time. It goes nowhere and says nothing. I call foul on this one.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Him (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 96 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual material, nudity, some drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Justin Tipping\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Skip Bronkie, Zack Akers and Justin Tipping\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bobby Krlic\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Kira Kelly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 19, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jeffries, Naomi Grossman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Him-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C981&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13060"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13069,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13060\/revisions\/13069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}