If you put Jordan Peele's name on anything in any capacity nowadays, said project will immediately hit people's radar. Him is a golden example, a film directed by Justin Tipping that you'd be justified in thinking was directed by Peele due to how aggressively his name is all over the thing despite only acting as producer on it. I'm curious to see how this kind of marketing affects Peele's legacy, as he is yet to miss as a filmmaker but this is one of a handful of projects with his name on it that doesn't come near his pedigree.
Him follows Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers), a top football prospect whose draft status is put in question after he is attacked one night and given a skull fracture. With his career up in the air he is given the chance to train for a week with his idol Isiah White (Marlon Wayans), with hopes of being signed to succeed him after White's looming retirement. All is not as it seems though, as Wayans methods become more and more frightening as he tests what limits Cam is willing to push in his pursuit of greatness.
This is a film I had some decent hope for thanks to the premise. We don't get many sports centred horror films and this is one that takes topical ideas like the pursuit of being "The GOAT" and uses them as the crux for its tension. Sadly I found that this largely missed the mark. The thought of using the pursuit of greatness as the driving force of a horror movie is a great idea in my opinion, but it's brought to life far too messily to succeed in saying much of anything. Sports culture is so focused on crowning someone as the greatest of all time, but to hear people unironically saying "the GOAT" as many times as we do in this just feels incredibly eye roll inducing. As a whole it feels like Tipping is trying way too hard to make something cool, and the end result is a final product where you can see that intent clear as day.
The dialogue on the whole is pretty cringey, but the filmmaking gives off this same inauthentic attempt at coolness as well. Admittedly there are visuals that are pretty awesome, but the way those visuals are cut together left me feeling very mixed. There's a chaotic nature to the editing that at times creates an exciting tone, but often just feels like a mess of visuals that never gives interesting moments enough time to shine. Too many scenes feel like they're trying to evoke a rave and it winds up just getting exhausting. There's also a ton of dream sequences or hallucinations that don't feel earned but seem more intended to give Tipping a chance to put more cool visuals to the screen. Ultimately nothing feels earned from a narrative standpoint due to how little focus is put on developing the characters and story compared to how much is put on making something "cool".
From a performance standpoint I will give some credit, Withers doesn't have nearly enough of an arc but he does a good job with what he's given. He does show some range towards the end, his transition just isn't earned enough to properly land but that's the fault of an underbaked script rather than his performance. Marlon Wayans on the other hand is simply fantastic. I do wish we got to see under the hood of his character a bit more, but Wayans delivers an intense and at times terrifying performance. It takes a lot of confidence for a performer to attack the senses as aggressively as he does here and I never once doubted his performance. The only other notable actors are Julia Fox and Tim Heidecker, both of whom are fine I guess but at times both feel like they're in a different movie.
I will say I liked the ending. As I mentioned earlier it is very much not earned, but it's an entertaining close to the story despite that. All in all though I just left the theatre feeling disappointed. There are a lot of interesting ideas here but they wind up being underdeveloped in lieu of a failed attempt at making something cool and a narrative that winds up getting pretty basic. 2/5
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