Him (2025)

Him

• I have to admit, I was quite excited for this for about a month before it came out. I love football, and I love horror. Therefore, a football horror film seemed right up my alley. However, it definitely wasn’t as good as I was hoping it would be. I still think it’s underrated, because Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of Letterboxd reviews are trashing this. I fully understand why, because a lot of it is sloppy and a mess. But I did think it was pretty entertaining. I love the concept of the greed and worship of football being used in a horror sense. There’s a certain parallel to the real world with this, but only to an extent. There’s a lot that feels out of place, both in a positive and negative way. The story is alright, with the “how far would you go to be the best” idea, that does kind of work. But there’s so much absurdity (which I liked) that might pull you out of the film every once and a while. A lot of it reminded me of ‘Infinity Pool’ in terms of imagery and themes. I thought the first and second act were pretty decent, though most of the third was weak. The last couple minutes were pretty sweet, but the halfway point started to lose me just a little bit. I think there was too much repetition of ideas. Like the writers wanted to make sure you knew exactly what the point of this is, over and over again. The performances were awesome from Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers, but everyone else was a bit generic. Lastly, the soundtrack was solid, with a nice upbeat modern sound that fits the other elements of the film. Overall, it does lack in some departments (writing and pacing), but some of the surrealness is interesting to pay attention to. Also, don’t let the fact that Jordan Peele produced this get your expectations up. All he did was produce, nothing else. I would recommend it to most horror fans that are into football.