HIM (2025)

(Natasha Lyonne's Charlie from Poker Face suddenly pops up to say her most delightful and frequent line): 

... Bullshit!

HIM! What a misguided, boring-ass muddle of hallucinations and dream scenes that mean to add portent and horror and do little of either, with two potentially interesting directions to have as antagonists totally squandered, and then the last ten minutes of this becomes one of the most howlingly awful endings to any major studio movie since I can remember. Like, forget shitting the bed, this is excreting from every orefice and then getting doused in kerosene, tar, feathers, and sweaty gym socks and being shot out of a cannon back into and through the bed that is also covered in shit and blood and everything else that John Waters would think up on all the weed circa 1971. Just... AWFUL.

But until that ending gets here, we have a movie that has a limited amount of narrative thrust due to the fact that there really isn't anywhere to go with the seemingly heated dynamic between Cam and his idol turned demented mentor Isaiah White (Withers and Wayans respectively).  Objectively good cinematography can only get someone so far; what we are actively seeing for the better part of the six days this young, maybe brain-damaged but committed wanna-be GOAT spends at the compound of the current Is He GOAT, okay, is repetitive and monotonous.  Sacrifice? Everything! Show me! AHHH I AM A GREAT FOOTBALL GOD I WANT BLOOD! Rinse wash repeat.

I had heard good things about both performers here, and Wayans especially from the trailer seemed to be bringing  dump truck full of charisma.  He especially has a lot of fire and power and talent to bring, but it is for a script that has nowhere to go and so he is stuck doing the same kind of spiel and act in scene after scene (if anything, it made me want to see him play a real-world pop culture psychotic cult leader also Diddy or something instead).  And Withers is... fine, I guess, but there isn't much to feel for him and that is both a script and actor problem as he is given what he has and he does little to elevate it.  Only Julia Fox gives the movie some much needed personality and pulse in her scenes.

The squandered part is that a) you have the evil old white owners of the team characters, and they don't make any impression really until the finale where it is all just a pretentious laughingstock, and b) the cult-fans of Isaiah so pissed that their idol may retire that they foam at the mouth... and then we only see a few of them later on and it is a brief "oh, okay, here we go" beat that ends before it gets a chance to get going.  The whole aspect of the crazy fans/worshipers is at least an angle (and in terms of satire and IRL parallels, think about those in MAGA who are still ride or die after all this time as a comparison).  But Tipping and the writers keep things so insulated between the mentor and apprentice that this is just left by the wayside except for the one burst of violence that happens when the one lady breaks in.  

I will also readily admit I am not one that is so crazy about American Football as far as sports go, but a hook is a hook and the very basic line of "a star quarterback realizes his hero is not who he seems to be" is a decent one.  For a drama. 

As a horror movie?  Again, I call back to Charlie from Poker Face; this is trying oh so hard to come off as a deep statement about how sinister the world of professional sports is, and it is a fairly soft target at this point.  One thinks back to Get Out and a part of why that was radical is that the villains being White middle class liberal-ish civilians is hitting right at a part of the power structure that doesn't get challenged enough.  A power-hungry older football player and a power-hungry younger guy and the "cabal" of sorta Satanic evil-Gods controlling football?  Please.

But a lot of this is just boring and needlessly convoluted. If it were only that only I might leave disappointed, but at least I would try to look for the good amid the poor qualities... but that ending.  Woof.  Double woof.  I really encourage anyone to check it out just to see something that *goes for it* for all of the wrong reasons.  

And I am all for big swings!  This, on the other hand, starring with that expected showdown and into that set piece where all hell breaks loose, it is (except for some of the lighting) bad on every level.  It sucks as direction, it sucks as performances, it sucks as horror special effects, and the writing is baffling to a level that I have seen student films with far more competence and intelligence.  

Him?  Fuck Him.