Him (dir. Justin Tipping)

by Jack Martin | Oct 5, 2025

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 96 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 3 October 2025

WHO’S IN HIM?

Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, Jim Jefferies, Naomi Grossman, GiGi Erneta, Norman Towns, Maurice Greene, Guapdad 4000, Tierra Whack

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Justin Tipping (director, writer), Zach Akers and Skip Bronkie (writers), Ian Cooper, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld (producers), The Haxan Cloak (composer), Kira Kelly (cinematographer), Taylor Mason (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

An aspiring football player (Withers) is put through a testing regime by a former quarterback (Wayans)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON HIM?

“Greatness” is a phrase uttered so often in director and co-writer Justin Tipping’s Him that if you were to create a drinking game around it, you’d be throwing up into the toilet bowl before you’ve even made it to the halfway point. Of course, it forms the film’s central theme of what those aspiring for greatness would be willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it, as well as what kind of horrific hurdles one must clear before they can even come close.

But for all its talk of greatness, Him itself is far from great. In fact, it’s actually pretty bad. Not for lack of trying, for it is certainly ambitious with some of its ideas and especially its heavy and often overwhelming style, but it ends up saying very little of value whilst constantly whacking you over the head with surreal imagery that serves no true purpose other than to irritate rather than entertain.

Him follows Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a young American football player who’s rapidly on the rise, to where he’s being seriously discussed as a replacement for his quarterback hero Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) on the influential team known as the San Antonio Saviours, and brace yourself if you think that’s the only piece of blatant Christ-like symbolism in the movie. White soon invites Cade to his private facility in the middle of the desert, where he undergoes an increasingly intense series of ritualistic exercises – among them witnessing someone have their face repeatedly smashed in by a football throwing machine if he doesn’t perfect a spiral toss – that a clearly deranged White revels a bit too hard in. Yet, for all the blatant red flags around him, least of all he’s in a place that would for sure double as the lair for a classic Bond villain, Cade persists as he endures many of his hero’s psychologically tormenting tests with the promise that he, too, will be the “GOAT” (greatest of all time, for those who don’t know modern lingo).

To Tipping’s credit, it isn’t as though he and fellow writers Zach Akers and Skip Bronkie have nothing on their minds. If anything, there’s way too much, as their script dabbles in numerous concepts surrounding the constant pressure of living up to overwhelming hype, in this case being an athlete who’s seen by everyone as being practically the next Messiah, be they high-ranking sports officials or some of the dangerously obsessive fans who camp outside of this heavily guarded facility where we spend most of the movie. The director also has a clear sense of style, creating a series of nightmarish visuals that are sharply shot by cinematographer Kira Kelly, which themselves form something that is appropriately grotesque yet oddly stunning in their craft.

However, Him is a classic case of style over substance, as its flashiness fails to fully distract from the utter emptiness of the narrative. The film almost never takes time to articulate what particular messages it wants to depart, and in the few moments that it does, some painfully on-the-nose dialogue gets in the way of their intended impact. It’s also inexplicably sure of itself that it thinks the vivid imagery is doing all the talking, but when you see certain abstract concepts play out, there’s such little consistency to them that it ends up coming off as muddled and even pretentious, further diluting its ultimate purpose.

At no point do you care about the personal journey of our young protagonist because he’s written as such a blank slate with no personality to speak of or even any kind of interesting backstory to latch onto, and also because – quite sadly – Withers’ performance is exceptionally wooden, with very little range in his facial expressions that offer any hint of inner thought, making it hard to form any kind of connection with this character who’s already not well-defined on paper. Everyone else in the movie is acting circles around this guy, least of all Wayans who, in a ferociously entertaining turn that is easily the highlight of the movie, goes gung-ho with a performance that is effortlessly unhinged but also genuinely intimidating in parts, since he commands the screen with a presence that you’re almost frightened of.

“Almost” is the key word, because Him, try as it might with all the weird horrific things going on at such a frenetic pace, simply isn’t scary. This is the kind of horror movie where freaky things happen simply for the sake of freakiness, with little rhyme or reason for any of them other than to insert some out-there imagery to substitute actual depth to the story and characters. It’s more annoying than anything, because you want to form some kind of emotional connection with this narrative, but it keeps stopping dead in its tracks for random distractions that leave you even more lost than you already are. By the time it reaches a rather barmy climax, complete with Tarantino-style gore effects, instead of enjoying the utter madness you’re left feeling entirely unstimulated, for not only has the film not done enough beforehand to earn such a wild conclusion but it also feels like a completely different movie, one that we’d rather have spent the last ninety minutes watching instead.

Contrary to its endless talk of greatness, Him isn’t great. It’s not even good. It’s a sluggish, irritatingly empty piece of surrealist horror that could have been great, if it weren’t for its resounding need to flaunt its assumed greatness.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Him is a stylish but substantially empty surreal horror that fails to address any of its ambitious ideas in a coherent or even scary fashion, with only a ferociously unhinged Marlon Wayans providing consistent entertainment.