'HIM' review: Sports-horror movie fumbles

In "HIM," college football star Cam Cade survives an inexplicable injury that leaves him with brain trauma, skull staples and little hope of a pro career. Then comes an invitation to train under his idol, Isaiah White, a legendary quarterback. At Isaiah’s remote compound in the Texas desert, Cam finds the latest technology but also a culture of cruelty — and something verging on the supernatural.

"When you love something, it’s easy to make sacrifices," Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) tells Cam (Tyriq Withers) between pummeling his lackeys and ingesting bags of blood. "So what gets you on the field?"

The rare sports-themed horror movie — can you think of another? — "Him" arrives with the imprimatur of producer Jordan Peele (via his Monkeypaw Productions company), though it’s directed by newcomer Justin Tipping, who wrote the screenplay with two others. Peele’s fingerprints are all over "HIM" does not have the Peele touch. What it has is an intriguing premise, but no coherent story and no clear idea of what it wants to say.

As hip-hop heads know, "Him" is a boast roughly synonymous with "the man" — as in, "I’m him!" But the movie was initially titled "Goat," as in Greatest of All Time, and that’s the main motif: You’ll see horned headdresses, goat skulls and a guy who goes "Baaa!" There can be only one GOAT, logically, yet Isaiah seems intent on bringing Cam into his cult. (His reasons, once explained, are less than satisfying.) Meanwhile, we learn that Isaiah likes to watch people suffer (one guy obliges by taking machine-propelled footballs to the face) and wants to push Cam to his physical and emotional limits. Isaiah also has a sexy-yet-ghastly wife, Elsie (played by Julia Fox as a Kardashian-esque grotesque), though her role feels like an afterthought.

Wayans tries to come off as charismatic and mercurial, but Isaiah as a character is merely inconsistent and annoying. (He commands Cam to strip, then says he didn't mean completely — that kind of thing.) As for Withers, a real-life former college player in one of his first film roles, he’s so low-energy and non-reactive that he seems to be acting under anesthesia. Tipping does find one way to hold our interest, by filming certain scenes in X-ray vision — an arresting visual that underscores the fragility of the human body and calls up echoes of the football-related brain disease CTE.

Near its end, "HIM" nods glancingly to the racial disparities within pro football — namely, teams of largely Black players owned largely by white men. That is one big can of worms, and this movie is not equipped to handle such a wriggly subject. The sharpest insights you’ll get from "Him" are that football is a violent sport and "GOAT" sounds like the animal.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com