REVIEW: ‘HIM’ Throws Deep Into Football Culture

Football is God in the South. It’s blasphemous, but it’s true. As much as the Christian South shows up to church on Sundays, they also worship Nick Saban. But to go one further, all of America worships at the altar of the great American quarterback. HIM (2025) is a movie that takes American football culture and throws the ball deep, exploring the role of religion in the sport, the brutal physical sacrifices players make, and doesn’t shy away from how the QB position has always been racialized. 

While producer Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions are heavily featured in the marketing for HIM (2025), it should be noted that the film doesn’t live in his shadow. While the societal horror on display is the same sandbox that Peele’s iconic work plays in, writer-director Justin Tipping (with Zack Akers & Skip Bronkie co-writing the screenplay) doesn’t deal in subtleties, as the name plastered at the top of the poster suggests. Instead, Tipping gleefully takes every concept you see in football and rips them apart at the seams.

HIM (2025) centers on Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), the next generational quarterback. We meet Cade as a child, cheering on Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) in front of the TV in his living room. The family has San Antonio Saviors paraphernalia everywhere, clearly huge fans. Most importantly, one surface the camera keeps turning to captures the family’s devotion to their team, and an altar that pulls their fandom into perspective. 

As they watch the game, White is injured, and Cameron’s father forces him to watch it. The broken bone protruding from his leg is a career-ending injury. But instead of consoling his son or even admonishing the NFL-equivalent leniency on tackles, the father says that is what real men do. They sacrifice their bodies for their sport, for their goal. No guts, no glory. 

Hypermasculinity and a warped father/son dynamic pave the way in HIM (2025).

From the very start of the movie, HIM (2025) embraces the crux of American Football. It is violent, it is lucrative, it is beloved by fans, and it can and does alter the course of someone’s life. It can make these gladiators of the field into gods, and it can spit them out with one injury. Still, Cameron’s dad is more concerned about the possibility of divinity than the pain of injury. 

Jumping forward in time, HIM (2025) pulls the audience to a successful Cameron Cade. He’s a projected number one draft pick, and after the combine, well, he will be on his way to securing a generational fortune for his family and achieving his father’s dream. But when he’s attacked during training, his combined hopes fall short, and he is left with nothing but the sinking despair of failure. His idol reaches out his hand. 

What follows throughout the rest of the film is a training camp, run by the now eight-time Super Bowl Champion, Isaiah White. The training camp happens in isolation from the world. Cameron hands off his phone, gets treated by a renowned sports medicine doctor, and is pushed to his physical limit, all in the hope of taking Isaiah White’s coveted QB1 spot on the roster for the San Antonio Saviors. 

With unhinged fans outside White’s compound greeting him and increasingly brutal physical training, Cameron Cade has to figure out what he will do to be the greatest of all time. What will he sacrifice to redefine the role of the quarterback? And what will he do to reach the success his father always dreamed of?

Him (2025) is not a subtle movie. It thrives on both its chaotic and atmospheric visuals, often focusing on the pageantry of the situation over the substance it’s highlighting—but that’s not much unlike the NFL if we’re being entirely honest. However, while the absurdist satire and horror visions take hold in the third act, the film’s visual identity is its least engaging aspect. 

Played by former college wide receiver Tyriq Withers (I Know What You Did Last Summer), the level of fear and authenticity that we see on screen is mesmerizing. But a lot of this comes to the way that Tipping chooses to engage with football culture, which may be lost on some viewers who are unfamiliar with the sport beyond RedZone games. 

As I watched HIM (2025), the old adage ‘If you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterbacks’ kept playing in my head. References to EA Sports’ Madden were plenty; the foundational place that Indigenous young men have in football is established early on, the burden of the Black quarterback is front and center, and ultimately, the deep religiosity of the sport is core to the path that Cameron is walking, his dad’s gold cross hanging around his neck. 

Justin Tipping knows football in a way that permeates even scenes off the field. He understands that “God, Family, Football” is central to many programs, and the shocking reality that some programs will even bench players who refuse to play. Yup, I know someone who that happened to.

Football culture, in all its intricacies, is on display here, but there IS a learning curve.

Heck, watch any post-game interview and the first thing said is often some variation of “Thank you, Jesus” or “Glory to God.” Religion is at the core of how Americans celebrate the sport, and Tipping latches onto that. Not only devotion, but also idolatry is at play in the worship of athletes. 

But while Christianity permeates HIM (2025), much of its placement exists only to showcase the sacred becoming profane. Rather than deconstructing the impact of religion in football, the film showcases how the greatest athlete of all time becomes a religion unto himself. In that way, Marlon Wayans’ performance reaches new heights compared to the rest of his filmography. 

Still, the impact that Isaiah White has on the audience isn’t because he’s the Chosen One; it’s because he is echoing statements that the audience has heard other quarterbacks make. As White yells at Cade, forcing him to stop yelling at his receivers and putting the burden on the quarterback’s shoulders the same way the crowd would, it’s easy to see Tom Brady. When the duo is sitting in a sauna and White begins to contemplate what leaving football would mean, it’s even easier to see Aaron Rodgers. 

Those moments of monologue throughout the film work to establish where HIM (2025) sees itself within larger pop culture. There are no real easter eggs for top quarterbacks throughout the film, but there are monologues that easily capture a vision in any football fan’s mind. And that’s where HIM (2025) succeeds. Even more so as we begin to understand that Cameron Cade is very much the next generation of player, and breaking from the cycle or choosing to reinforce it becomes his primary conflict. 

From the use of X-ray filters to show the devastating impacts shown on screen to mini-history lessons, and small conversations that should make Cade run from the compound, it all works to tell the audience what this cycle of violence means, what it means to follow the past, and ultimately what it means to embrace a different future. 

Where Wayans’ portrayal of a generation’s quarterback finds its charisma is in the desperation that is always lurking beneath the surface as age begins to take its toll on the narrative. Cade becomes more secure in taking the QB1 spot. At the same time, Wayans never loses his signature comedic timing, making the film equally as humorous through both the outright use of one-liners and situational comedy. 

As a part of the extended cast, Jim Jefferies plays White’s personal doctor. He’s there to heal players and support the team, but his sardonic viewpoint offers levity and impending doom in equal measure. Yes, this also notes the very best I have seen Jeffries at as well. In fact, HIM (2025)’s use of comics is a win for this horror film. Comedy and horror are genres that utilize empathy to drive reaction, and Marlon Wayans, Tim Heidecker, and Jim Jefferies form a trio that keeps the audience in a slight giggle while also unnerving them as Cade’s days at the compound continue. 

HIM (2025) isn’t perfect, however. Justin Tipping is extremely concerned with setting key visuals that can be printed and put on a canvas or shared on social media. While some aspects work narratively, particularly in drawing inspiration from the Roman Colosseum to detail the compound and highlighting Cade’s status as a modern gladiator, other moments, such as the use of weird mascots with no connection to the visuals we’ve been given to recognize the sports teams, fall flat.

The script, meanwhile, provides a solid understanding of the sport. Rooted in the fact that Tyriq Withers was formerly a Florida State Seminoles wide receiver, college football fans will recognize that even more depth is added to the racial commentary seen throughout the film.

Focus on visuals sometimes backfires, with the spectacle failing to gloss over inconsistencies.

Unfortunately, as the film’s third act begins to rev its engine, I found myself questioning if my knowledge of the sport and its history was doing more heavy lifting than the film itself. This is due in large part to the inconsistencies shown throughout the training portions of the game, the shallow understanding of the fictional teams that Tipping and crew have created, and, more importantly, the choice to put everything into visuals. 

When we just have Withers and Wayans on screen, it’s magic. When the production design is stripped away and it is just the two quarterbacks, well, the generational divide hits exactly as you would expect. The mortality of athletes is two-fold. It happens once when they’re injured, and a second time when they pass the torch. The revolving door of bodies keeps moving, and names become mascots. Tipping captures that reality with HIM (2025), even if the spectacle sometimes overtakes the truth.

The reality is that in the last NFL season, someone died on the field, was resuscitated, and taken off the field in an ambulance. The other players, forced by the NFL to continue the game, agreed to talk on the field and let the clock run out. Even outside of American Football, the 2021 Euros had a similar situation with Danish star Christian Eriksen suffering a heart attack.

If you don’t watch sports or haven’t played sports, it’s easy to see how HIM (2025) can feel like too much guts for not enough glory. But if you do and you have, it all comes together. It is no small statement to say that athletes kill themselves for their stardom, compounded by the rising number of former athlete suicides, often caused by CTE. And while some may have issues with the film’s end (its spectacle notwithstanding), the conclusion puts the main drivers of football’s power dynamics into conversation with one of its largest evils: owners. 

Granted, Tipping and company overlook how NFL players and college players, at this point, make millions of dollars, can retain their positions on teams despite heinous acts, and now have more agency than ever. However, the overall sentiment remains. Football players are here for us, their team’s owners, and then of course, to just become him. 

Every game is a performance, and that’s what HIM (2025) is concerned about. The film doesn’t care about the nuances. It’s only look at it is that “Pressure is a privilege,” noting as much in the film, calling out to Billie Jean King’s famous quote. It’s about guts and glory, and how once the entertainment machine is done with you, it spits you out, and at most, you become a mascot, and at worst, you’re not remembered at all. 

There is a lot to talk about legacy here, and even more when for Black men, football has been painted as the only way out, and yet they have been restricted from playing the most lucrative positions and becoming faces of franchises. There is a lot to look at when it comes to how football perpetuates masculine ideals, and less about the sport’s positive slants – how it connects you to something bigger, to people, places, and histories. 

HIM (2025) is far from perfect for me, as a football fan, and I can anticipate that viewers who have no idea what a QB1 is, or even Withers’ own important background as a college player, will see it even less so. But it is guts and it is glory, marked by its ambition and only let down by its spectacle. 

HIM (2025) opens in theaters September 19, 2025.