Him, a Jordan Peele-produced splatter film in the psychological mold of Us, deviates from the schmaltzy, feel-good formula that has defined American sports movies since Charlie Chaplin in The Champion. Tackle football, notorious for eating the young, is recast as a genuine meat grinder for Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) – a generational college quarterback touted as an heir apparent to Marlon Wayans’s Isaiah White, the Tom Brady of this world. But when a trippy, blunt force head injury endangers Cameron’s professional aspirations and multimillion-dollar payday, he agrees to train and rehab at Isaiah’s desert-based cement compound – a haunted house of vice and duplicity that threatens to swallow Cameron whole.
Him is not a subtle critique of America’s pastime. It opens with Isaiah breaking his leg on a championship-winning drive, and young Cameron taking in the gruesome injury from his living room floor while his father drills the mantra “no guts, no glory” into his psyche. It reintroduces football, quite rightly, as a veritable meat market where players are poked, prodded and scrutinized like chattel. Director Justin Tipping even switches to X-ray vision to bring out the underlying damage that can result from football’s incessant collisions, one of many stylish visual touches.
