Noted philosopher Lady Gaga once said, “It doesn’t matter if you love him or capital ‘H-I-M.’” Having now seen the movie Him, directed by Justin Tipping, I have to assume that neither the lower-case nor the upper-case version of the phrase in Gaga’s song was referring to this film, because I’m not sure how anyone could love Him.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “HIM”

5. Tom Brady Fan-Fiction

Him was written by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers, before being retouched by director Tipping just before production. From very early on in the film’s runtime, a couple of different things become glaringly apparent about the inspiration for this story:

• It was a spec script, pretty obviously inspired by the pop-cultural conversations surrounding real-life NFL star Tom Brady.
• It uses the phrase ‘G.O.A.T.’ so frequently and loosely that one has to assume it was titled The Goat somewhere along the way before someone got cold feet and changed it to the much blander actual title, Him.

With only the slightest bit of perusing, I found out the latter of these is 100% confirmed, and that the former is being avoided in name only for legal reasons. None of this is inherently bad on its own, but it’s an incredibly blatant hook and concept that feels like it was dreamed up by your aunt who still spends way too much time on Facebook every day. Him could have been something if it took this concept and ran with it, but instead, it feels like an extremely dull and uninspired bit of Tom Brady fan-fiction brought to life.

4. A Story Devoid of Integrity

Part of the real problem with his writing is that the film never allows time for the story or its characters to ground themselves in any sense of authenticity or integrity. It’s a film about an up-and-coming quarterback, as played by Tyriq Withers (who is hysterically playing for ‘the league’ but not the NFL, due to copyright legal reasons one would presume), and the seasoned veteran QB, the aforementioned ‘G.O.A.T.’ and Tom Brady analogue, as played by Marlon Wayans.

However, it never really feels like a coherent or compelling dynamic is established between these two characters, despite the entire film resting on their relationship. From the very opening of the film, Him is a movie that is much more comfortable telling the audience things than it is showing it to them, so painfully exhibited by the opening ten minutes or runtime, which features literal sports announcers spouting non-stop exposition at you over the top of miscellaneous footage. This feels like a haphazard and wasteful way to start, and it only gets worse from there. Following the introduction of the two central characters to one another, the film immediately cuts to a pop-song-scored training montage with a bunch of peripheral characters cluttering both the frame and the story itself.

Because the film is so seemingly obsessed with keeping things fast-paced, it never gives itself any room to breathe or marinate in anything, resulting in a work whose story feels paper-thin.

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3. Music Video Editing

One problem bleeds into the next, as the music video-style editing of Him feels both like a result of the poorly paced writing and an attempt to assuage such issues in post-production, to no avail. The film is full of scenes where a needle drop will occur, and it will proceed to quickly intercut a litany of fast-moving images, grasping for a sense of kineticism. And sure, this fallback becomes grating after a while, but it’s far from the film’s biggest shortcoming.

Rather, what really weakens the film is its insistence on editing the horror sequences in the exact same way. Nothing feels thought-out, articulate, or meticulous in terms of staging and execution. Instead, everything from the very first horror scene to the very last one feels like they shot a bunch of stuff on the day and just kind of took bits and pieces of a bunch of different approaches in the editing suite. The result is that nothing feels remotely shocking, suspenseful, or affecting, because it all feels so woefully dissonant and incoherent from the very start.

2. Marlon Wayans’ Performance

I really respect and admire Marlon Wayans. I think he is not only hilarious, but also a remarkable and multi-talented performer and creator across the board. When I saw the ads for Him, I was genuinely excited, because it felt like an inspired bit of metatextual casting, turning audiences’ familiarity with Wayans as a fun-loving performer against them in subversive form. I genuinely believe Wayans could knock a role like this out of the park; I know he has the chops for it.

However, Him is not it. For one, as with everything in the film, the approach to his role feels so loosey-goosey and distinctly unplanned on every level, with multiple instances of Wayans’s improvising clearly making the cut. And while his lines can have a comedic charm to them, they feel so atonal to the rest of the film that it is incredibly jarring. On top of that, any time the film wants him to be menacing or serious, the default setting for the performance is just for Wayans to yell loudly and make a very serious face. This all results in an erratic, sporadic, and disappointingly hollow performance.

1. Flair Over Substance

Him prioritizes flair over substance at every turn, from its visuals to its editing to its narrative. It wants everything to pop, and the team behind it is certainly not without its skills. Director Justin Tipping and cinematographer Kira Kelly deliver some incredibly well-captured and striking visual images throughout the movie, but often, these images fail to feel motivated by the film’s actual story, or even harm the film as a whole.

There is absolutely no better example of this than a mid-film moment, which sees Wayans’ character pushing Withers’ character at practice until the latter snaps, deciding to play nasty and helmet-to-helmet tackle another player. This is not only a crucial moment for this character’s arc, but an integral one for the film as a whole; it is a centerpiece moment that should be a very easy sell.

And yet, inexplicably, Tipping opts to not only break the line on the actual impact (cutting to a shot on the opposite side of the two actors, so that the screen direction is unexpectedly reversed) but also applies a CGI X-ray-esque filter to the shot. This combination of factors results in this key moment of the movie being absolutely illegible; you think that the person who falls over in pain is Withers’ character, because everything about the visual vernacular is telling you that, but it isn’t. When the abhorrently ugly X-ray vision effect goes away, he’s the one still standing, having hurt the other player. You as an audience member are left asking ‘wait, what happened?’ and playing catch-up, rather than experiencing the moment for yourself. And for what?

The movie has literally dozens of moments like this, where visual flair is so clearly put before narrative import that it actively harms the film.

RGM GRADE

(D-)

I really wanted to like Him. I’m a huge fan of Jordan Peele, whose producer credit has been plastered all over the marketing of this film for the sake of driving up audience interest, and have even really enjoyed other films he has produced without being directly involved in, such as Dev Patel’s Monkey Man. But Him is bad; it starts out bad, and winds up getting so completely derailed that by the end, it’s just a baffling and inexplicable product.

Will Jones