Couple of days ago I decided to give "HIM (2025)" a shot even though I knew it was "bad" although didnt know how much bad it was and man this thing had so much going for it but just could not stick the landing on anything, this movie should have been way better than it ended up being and I am disappointed, as expected; because the pieces were all there for something really good but it just never comes together the way it should. Marlon Wayans is seriously good here, this takes me back to when he blew everyone away in "Requiem for a Dream" but this might be the case that his time is over? I mean this was 25 years ago, overall I know he could do intense serious roles instead of just comedy and even though the movie drags like hell he shows he still got it going from some serious moments, to hilarious, to others where he just looks insane. He plays this retired quarterback Isaiah White who brings in this young kid Cameron played by Tyriq Withers to train at his crazy isolated compound in the middle of nowhere and right from the start you can tell something is off about the whole setup, the visuals are wild, the editing keeps things interesting and Withers does a great job selling the fact that he is this good guy slowly getting corrupted by being there and dealing with all this weird shit happening around him.
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Problem is the movie feels boring even though a lot of crazy stuff is happening on screen which is weird to say but that is exactly how it felt watching it, like the individual scenes look cool and the performances are solid but everything together just drags and never builds any real momentum that makes you care about whats going on. It has all these Whiplash vibes with the intense mentor thing where Isaiah is pushing Cameron to his limits and beyond, testing him physically and mentally to see if he has what it takes to be the next great quarterback but it does not go as deep as it thinks it does with any of the themes its trying to tackle about sacrifice and greatness and what it costs to be the best at something. There are these Mad Max looking fans painted up at one point screaming and acting like total psychos and I was like what the hell am I watching right now, like the movie throws all this imagery at you without ever really committing to what its trying to say, is it horror, is it sports drama, is it some kind of cult thing, it wants to be all of it but ends up not being good at any of it really.
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By the time we get to day three or four of the training I was ready for it to be over because the pacing is just off, each day is suppose to escalate the tension and the weirdness but instead it just feels repetitive, more injections, more hallucinations, more Isaiah being creepy and intense, more Cameron looking confused and uncomfortable but still going along with everything for reasons that never feel believable enough. The movie is only 96 minutes long but feels way longer than that mainly because it never lands in anything it just keep putting out cool but weird scenes but they are all distant from each other like nothing follows a sequence, scenes dont flow into each other, transitions are choppy and by the time the ending comes it just falls apart completely with weird choices and dialogue that feels out of place and unsatisfying. You find out there is this whole cult thing going on with the team owners and they have been grooming Cameron since he was a kid and his dad was in on it and they probably killed his dad to push him into football out of guilt, Im not sure about it but this is just probably me trying the movie means something else and looking under the rocks if there is something really special about it, some hidden message or something, Cameron just goes on a killing spree murdering everyone and kicking heads across the field and its suppose to be this big cathartic moment but it just feels empty and unearned because the movie never did the work to make you invested enough in any of this.
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The final scene is decent I guess with Cameron refusing to sign the contract and choosing to walk away from the whole demonic ritual power passing thing but by then it was too late to save anything because the entire second half of the movie already lost me completely and I just wanted it to end, it all felt force like they wanted to force the audience to swallow all that gore as a shocking event to cover up for an entire boring movie. The movie had so much potential and I say this because the entire production from camera angles, stages, the field itself like the camp it all look awesome and believable like something similar could really exist in the middle of the desert, the idea of a sports horror movie about the cult of football and how players are exploited and groomed and pushed to destroy there bodys and minds for entertainment, thats actually a really good idea that could have been executed in a way more interesting way than what we got here, in the middle of all this I would have expect they go to manipulate him by using drugs, I thought this was going to be the case when they start japping him with injections. Instead we get a bunch of trippy editing, some gross out moments with blood and injections, fans that look like zombies, and a third act that tries to be shocking but just comes across as silly and over the top without any real substance behind it, like they wanted to make a statement about toxic masculinity and the pressures athletes face but they never commit to exploring those ideas in any meaningful way.
If you want to see Wayans doing his thing in a serious role then sure go ahead and check it out because he really is the best part of this whole mess but this could have been so much better with a tighter script and a director who knew what kind of movie they actually wanted to make. There is one thing I forgot to mention and is how he constantly kept saying he was going to watch some tape, in football that means watching past games to study and it would have been awesome if it meant something else, say how he kept watching tapes and at the same time getting brain watch something like that. The performances are good, the visuals are cool for the most part, the sound too and camera work are solid but none of that matters when the story is this weak and predictable and boring even after all the craziness being thrown at you. I wanted to like this way more than I did but it just never comes together and by the end I was just releaved it was over and ready to move on to something else, maybe a 6 out of 10 and thats being generous because Wayans and Withers are actually trying there best with what they were given to work with here.
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