“Him” is A Mirror Held Up to Modern Sports and the Cult of Greatness, but Fumbles at the 50 Yard Line

When Him dropped, it wasn’t just marketed as a horror movie — it was framed as a sermon. A surreal, bloody, allegorical take on ambition, sacrifice, and identity within the machine of modern athletics. Director Justin Tipping ( not Jordan Peele), with Marlon Wayans in one of his most unsettling performances yet, gives us something that feels less like a movie and more like a fever dream about masculinity and worship — and how easily both can rot.

At first glance, Him looks like a sports drama gone feral. A promising college athlete, Cam Cade (played with anxious precision by Tyriq Withers), is invited to train with the legendary Isaiah White (Wayans), a retired football icon whose methods are… unorthodox, to say the least. The setup feels like Whiplash meets Get Out in cleats — mentorship curdles into obsession, excellence twists into exploitation, and the drive to be “the next big thing” becomes literal hell. But beneath the surface horror, Him is a film about the cultural sickness of greatness — about how we worship athletes, consume them, and then blame them when they crack under the very pressure we built around them.

The central metaphor of Him — the training compound that slowly turns into a cult — is almost too on-the-nose. But that’s the point. Isaiah’s followers treat him like a prophet of performance, quoting his motivational mantras like scripture. In their world, sweat is sacred, pain is holy, and the body is a temple to be burned down and rebuilt in his image.

Sound familiar?

That’s modern sports culture distilled to its ugliest form. From high school to the NFL, the message is consistent: “Be relentless. Be better. Be perfect.” It’s the language of grind culture and toxic masculinity, the idea that suffering is proof of worth. The movie just pushes it to its extreme — where discipline becomes doctrine, and winning becomes religion. Isaiah’s cult is what happens when “No pain, no gain” stops being a slogan and becomes scripture. He sees talent as a resource to be consumed — and when Cam arrives, he’s not a mentee; he’s a sacrifice.

Tipping’s direction makes it clear that Him isn’t just about athletic obsession — it’s about the performance of manhood. Every frame is soaked in testosterone and tension. The compound’s rituals, drills, even the way the men eat and sleep — all of it feels like an exaggerated version of locker room culture, but stripped of humor or relief. These men aren’t bonding; they’re breaking each other.

Cam’s relationship with Isaiah mirrors countless real-world mentor-protégé dynamics that turn parasitic. Isaiah claims he’s “making men,” but what he’s really doing is hollowing them out. He’s the embodiment of what happens when masculinity stops being about strength and becomes about domination — over others, over the body, over fear itself.

There’s one particular scene — a brutal, wordless training montage — where Cam’s body starts to give out. Isaiah doesn’t stop him; he watches, preaching endurance while Cam’s face contorts in agony. It’s horrifying because it’s familiar. We’ve seen versions of this every time a coach forces an injured player back onto the field. Every time fans call an athlete “soft” for showing pain. Every time a man is told, directly or indirectly, that his body’s limits are less important than his image. In that sense, Him isn’t just horror. It’s social commentary disguised as nightmare fuel.

The film’s religious symbolism isn’t subtle — there are literal crucifixions of identity, ritual sacrifices, and prayers before practice. But again, that excess serves a point. Him shows how sports culture mimics organized religion. There are uniforms, hymns, sermons, and chosen ones. There are saints (the greats) and sinners (those who “wasted their potential”). The crowd in the stands? Congregation. The camera? God’s eye.

Isaiah White preaches like a pastor — charismatic, manipulative, unwavering in his own myth. He sells salvation through sweat. His compound’s isolated setting and harsh discipline echo the same power structures that have always existed in both sports and faith: one man at the top, unquestioned, surrounded by followers desperate for meaning. What’s brilliant — and disturbing — is how Him weaponizes this parallel. The line between faith and fanaticism erodes. Isaiah tells Cam, “To be great, you must give everything.” And Cam does — until he has nothing left that’s truly his.

It’s an indictment of the way we, as a culture, define talent. We don’t just admire athletes; we consume them. We turn their pain into entertainment, their mistakes into scandal, and their exhaustion into weakness. Him takes that worship to its logical, terrifying conclusion — what if we built our idols so high that they stop being human altogether?

That said, Him is not a perfect sermon. It’s ambitious, maybe too ambitious. The film’s second half slips from psychological horror into near-total chaos. Some of its metaphors are pounded into the dirt (the religious imagery, the “sacrifice for greatness” motif), and the script doesn’t always trust its audience to connect the dots.

There’s also a pacing issue. The middle drags under its own symbolism, with so much emphasis on mood that character arcs start to flatten. Cam’s internal struggle is powerful, but the script doesn’t let us sit with his humanity long enough. We understand his pain, but we rarely feel his agency — and by the time the story reaches its violent, surreal climax, we’re spectators more than participants.

But the real missed opportunity lies in the film’s sociological focus. Him gestures at the broader system — the scouts, the media, the fans, the sponsorship machine — but never fully dives into them. Isaiah becomes the scapegoat for an entire culture, and while that makes for a focused horror villain, it also lets the system off the hook. The real monsters are bigger than one man — they’re the structures that reward obsession and punish vulnerability.

I don’t normally do this, but I want to see him improve

 The film’s themes are so strong that they don’t need to be shouted. Tipping could trust the visuals and performances to convey the message without overexplaining it through dialogue or symbolism. Let the horror breathe. Isaiah is fascinating but almost mythic — making him more grounded, more recognizably human, would make his menace scarier. Show more of what made him this way. Did the system break him first? Did the pressure of greatness deform him? That’s where the film’s heart really is. Future works exploring this territory should widen the scope beyond the compound. Show the sports media, the endorsement deals, and the fans who demand more and more. That connective tissue would make the film’s critique more biting — and harder to dismiss as “just horror.” One of Him’s most haunting threads is how Cam’s vulnerability becomes his downfall. Tipping could flip that dynamic — show that weakness can be strength, that empathy is rebellion. That would give the ending more emotional weight and thematic closure.

MY LAST DASH

Him is messy, bold, and sometimes infuriating — but it’s also important. It’s a rare film that stares directly into the ugly heart of sports worship and doesn’t flinch. It asks why we demand greatness from people who are still just people, why we mistake suffering for success, and why we keep confusing faith with fanaticism. Justin Tipping might not have made a perfect film, but he made one that sticks in your head and under your skin — and in an industry addicted to easy heroes and happy endings, that’s a victory in itself. In the end, Him reminds us that every legend we build comes at a cost. Every trophy gleams because someone bled for it. And maybe, just maybe, the scariest part of the story isn’t the monsters on screen — it’s how familiar they look when the lights come up.

HIM: final grade C As horror, it’s uneven. As social critique, it’s unforgettable.