You know, I’ve been sitting on this review for a while because honestly, I didn’t know how to approach it. What degree of negativity should I use for this movie? But I’m just going to say it the formal way: “HIM” is TRASH.

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The Cast and the Promise

The movie stars Tyriq Withers as the main character, Cameron Cade, and Marlon Wayans as Isaiah White, plus Julia Fox as Elise White. The opening graphics—which were visually intense—showed a lot of “wild stuff,” which I know is in the movie. But the real issue is how they handled the core concept.

The Creative Failure

The entire underlying premise of the movie is what would somebody do for greatness, for a legacy, and how far would they go? They took that idea and completely RUINED IT.

Look, I’m an athlete. And all athletes feel the same way about the game. Ain’t nobody ever done what this movie portrays. I get it, the production company is Monkeypaw, and they do “weird stuff,” but somebody should have stopped the writer right in his tracks for typing this up.

The film is just too riddled with the imagery, the demonic presence, and the obvious symbolism right from the jump. All it is is a dude selling his soul to get fame. That’s it! He replaced somebody who did it before him, and the cycle continues.

The movie is so stupid because it’s polluted with the symbolism. It’s too much! You have to build that up. Once you get to the point where the main character is practicing, you already know what time it is. And then you get to the ritualistic scene at the end—we already knew!

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Where the Real Story Is

Instead of wasting time on this trash, let’s talk about real movies about real sports and real athletes that address that intense pursuit of greatness:

• The Program (1993): If you want to talk about what somebody would do for a legacy, that’s where you look.
• Any Given Sunday (1999): If you want to know what athletes would do for a legacy, this is a much better answer.

Those movies are real. “HIM” is not.

Final Verdict and Outlook

I really don’t have much more to say. I’m not going to give away the movie because it’s not worth the spoilers, but I am not recommending this film.

The director hasn’t done much. I did see his other film, Kicks, back in 2015, and those two movies are polar opposites. I thought Kicks was going to be his lane, but with this, he just jumped out the window. I don’t think I’ll be looking for his name on anything else no time soon.

I’m still rocking with Monkeypaw and everything Jordan Peele has going on, even though some of his stuff is hit-or-miss. But I like that type of stuff—I just don’t like this.

Please let me know if you saw it. What did you think? If you’re an athlete and you saw it, what did you think? Because I’ve seen some non-athletes say it’s a good movie, but they just don’t get it.