Pro football, the movie doctor about to take on the institution over the issue of “Concussion” was famously warned, “owns a day of the week. The same day the Church used to own!”
“Him” is a horror movie that takes on that same institution, the “God, family and football” and not necessarily in that order ethos that the football crazed (and gambling-on-football addicts) preach. It’s a mad, ambitious allegory that dives into the Deal with the Devil one makes for a career in the game.
What director and co-writer Justin Tipping’s film asserts is nothing less than football is, in much of America, not just cultish but The New Religion. Those with the skill and physique necessary to compete must sacrifice everything — their bodies and futures included — if they want to glimpse the glory and partake in the pageant of it all.
“You think this is a GAME?”
You want to quarterback in the pros, you’ve got to bleed, suffer, master the pressure and see yourself as a god whose destiny is to be the GOAT — the Greatest of All Time.
Tipping’s film, produced by horror impressario Jordan Peele, takes a focused and talented top prospect (Tyriq Withers, quite good), recovering from severe head trauma, into a one week tryout that is a version of Dante’s descent into Hell. Team mascots become demons and satyrs, “free agents” trying out become sacrificial fodder and the team — the San Antonio Saviors — trains in a combination temple, shrine, gymnasium and brothel of football, an underground pigskin Mecca in the high desert.
Greek imagery abounds. A Leni Riefenstahl appreciation of semi-nude male fitness informs the visuals. And the subtext of young Black men contracting their health and their lives away to cadaverous white crones who own the teams and a racist culture fanbase is pretty hard to miss.
Those devoted to the game and their gambling “leagues” might not embrace the madness of this movie. But anybody who has followed The Game that Ate America will appreciate this allegory about the corrosive effects of a culture that “grooms” young men to play it and to obsess about the faux martial spectable of this meatgrinder long after they’ve left the playing to “professionals.
Cam Cade’s injury makes him an iffy prospect for the draft. So the god-like GOAT (Marlon Wayans, dauntingly over the top) quarterback of the Saviors wants to prep, nurture, test and intimidate the would-be-draftee who might be his replacement at a week-long pre-draft tryout.
There’s a Bateman-esque agent (Tim Heidecker, pretty much doing an impersonation of Jason Bateman) who wants this to happen, a single parent family relying on the prospect of Cam’s big payday, and a sports medicine Dr. Feelgood/Performance Juicer (Aussie comic Jim Jefferies).
“Never kill yourself for a job,” he counsels, fully aware that’s falling on deaf ears.
Eight-time champion quarterback Isaiah White (Wayans) may be in Cam’s face about the daddy issues that drive him and “How far would you go?”dedication. But he’s been hurt enough to hint at the younger man’s future.
And the Saviors’ quarterback’s brand-ambassador/infuencer wife (Julia Fox) is another peek at the future, what Cam’s high school sweetheart could devolve into — a profane “muse” with access to as many surgeons as her man.
Cam gets his bell run again and thinks he’s “seeing things.” But the deranged, painted-up fanatics at The Combine and their more fanatical kin who crowd the entrance to the training complex are real even if the demons dogging his every movie and serving up doubts aren’t.
I liked what Tipping is saying and was on board with this movie’s messaging the moment it was announced. “Concussiongate” was a real tipping point for me. Football fans? They probably won’t like this. But they get off easy here.
The body horror is rough, but not the grimmest we’ve seen of late. Tipping shows full-contact drills in X-ray vision, putting the head trauma of helmet-to-helmet contact on a screen so wide we can’t pretend not to see it or to minimize it.
Stripping sport of its reliance on The Big Game/Big Fight./Big Race formula is a fascinating “trend” in horror, as the Orlando Bloom body horror boxing picture “The Cut” (now showing in the UK, coming to North America in Oct.) covers similar ground about extreme physical sacrifice, long term damage and the hallucinatory “zone” one falls into when remaking your body.
“Him” — as in “You want to be ‘HIM,’ the guy” in the locker room, on the field and in public perception, The Man, Mr. “No Guts, No Glory” in the eyes of fans — is trippy and self destructive even as it pulls some punches.
The movie’s too short to get into deeper suggestions about the cultural cost of slavish devotion to a sport that churns through human fodder all in the name of providing the faithful a reason to tailgate and bet and argue about on online forums and sports talk radio costs the culture.
Limiting the cast to mainly these two Black quarterbacks allows race to be introduced in a series of glancing blows. But if you want to see Jerry Jones in the crone owner of this Texas team, it’s there.
But it’s totally on-brand for producer Peele, a horror film with smart social commentary on race, athletes and their “owners” who tempt players with promises of “generational wealth” and a “lifestyle” of the rich and entitled.
“I’ll take your youth” and by extension your body’s future health as part of the bargain. Too few ponder that Devil’s deal with the game that “owns a day of the week” until it’s too late.
Rating: R, bloody violence, drug abuse, nudity and profanity
Cast: Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, Tim Heidecker, Julia Fox and Jim Jefferies.
Credits: Directed by Justin Tipping, scripted by Zack Akers, Skip Bronkie and Justin Tipping. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:36
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