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Him Movie Review: Terrifying Marlon Wayans Can’t Save a Lackluster Plot

HIM pairs Marlon Wayans’s unnerving football superstar with a promising horror premise, but its blunt, meandering story struggles to match its style.
Opened Runtime4 min Written byDocumentaryTube Team
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HIM has a sharp horror hook: a young quarterback enters the orbit of his football idol, only to find the mentorship turning sinister. Marlon Wayans gives Isaiah White a disquieting mix of charm and threat, but the film’s increasingly surreal story struggles to make its ideas land with equal force. The result is striking in flashes and frustrating as a whole.

What is HIM about?

Directed by Justin Tipping, this 2025 horror thriller stars Tyriq Withers as Cameron Cade, a quarterback prospect whose path is derailed when he is attacked by an obsessive fan. His idol, superstar Isaiah White, played by Marlon Wayans, invites him to train for a week at an isolated Texas compound. What begins as an extraordinary opportunity gradually becomes a disorienting psychological ordeal.

The premise puts the machinery of football stardom inside a horror framework: the athlete’s body is both his instrument and the thing the culture seems willing to consume. The compound narrows the story’s world, making the training feel less like a route to success than a test of how much Cam will surrender to reach it.

Does Marlon Wayans make Isaiah White terrifying?

Wayans is the film’s most immediately unsettling presence. Isaiah’s public-facing warmth and assurance make the menace more effective than a straightforward display of cruelty would be; the danger seems to grow out of the same confidence that makes him an idol. The role’s tension depends on that shift, and Wayans gives Isaiah enough charisma for the threat to feel plausible within the film’s heightened world.

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#1 Best Overall

That strength does not resolve the film’s larger problem. Isaiah can command a scene, but his presence cannot supply the story with a sharper progression or a more satisfying payoff. The performance gives the premise an engaging center even as the plot around it loses momentum.

Can Tyriq Withers ground Cam’s surreal ordeal?

Withers has the harder task: Cam must remain a recognizable young athlete while the experience around him grows more dreamlike and extreme. His performance provides a human point of entry into the compound’s strangeness, but the screenplay increasingly puts him through images and confrontations that feel designed to announce the film’s meaning rather than deepen his choices.

That leaves Cam’s inner journey less compelling than the setup promises. The film makes his vulnerability legible, yet it does not consistently turn that vulnerability into a sense of discovery. As the ordeal escalates, the audience can understand the danger without always feeling that the character’s path is developing with it.

Where does the football-horror premise lose momentum?

The first turn—from elite training opportunity to coercive, uncanny contest—offers a strong engine for suspense. The film also has room to satirize the demands placed on athletes: discipline, bodily sacrifice, and the pressure to become a marketable symbol. But the story’s movement from football satire toward a more enclosed, haunted-house-like confrontation narrows its possibilities before it has fully explored them.

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Rank #3
Get Him to The Greek [Blu-ray]
  • Deleted And Extended Scenes
  • Alternate Intro: The Castle
  • Alternate Ending: Riding Daphne
  • Feature Commentary With Cast And Crew
  • Full Music Videos And Concert Performances

Jake Coyle’s September 18, 2025 Associated Press review likewise sees a potent premise give way to an increasingly tedious experience. TIME’s September 19, 2025 review emphasizes a different weakness: the film can state its critique too explicitly, even when its imagery has already made the point. Together, those readings capture the central frustration: HIM has ideas worth building a horror film around, but its storytelling does not develop them with enough subtlety or propulsion.

Does the visual style strengthen the themes?

At its best, the film uses the body as part of its argument. TIME notes X-ray-like imagery during collisions, a visual choice that makes the physical cost of football difficult to ignore. Such moments fit the film’s interest in the athlete as both performer and product, and its willingness to make that cost grotesque suits the horror mode.

The difficulty is that an image can be forceful without needing a second explanation. When the film spells out what its visuals have already suggested, the critique becomes blunt rather than more persuasive. The style creates memorable jolts, but those jolts do not always add up to a coherent emotional or satirical arc.

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What should viewers know before watching?

Universal classifies HIM as an R-rated horror thriller, citing strong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual material, nudity, and some drug use. The studio’s film page lists a runtime of 1 hour 37 minutes; its disc specifications list 1 hour 36 minutes, so the stated length varies by source and edition. The football league depicted is fictional, not the real NFL.

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Best Value
Why Him? [Blu-ray]
  • The disk has English audio.

For home viewing, Universal lists 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD editions, with a physical-media street date of November 11, 2025. Its October 6, 2025 announcement also listed digital purchase or rental availability; access and current availability depend on the retailer and territory. The film’s visual design offers a reason to consider a high-definition edition, though its uneven storytelling may limit its appeal as a repeat watch.

Quick Recap

Bestseller No. 1
Bestseller No. 2
Bestseller No. 3
Get Him to The Greek [Blu-ray]
Get Him to The Greek [Blu-ray]
Deleted And Extended Scenes; Alternate Intro: The Castle; Alternate Ending: Riding Daphne; Feature Commentary With Cast And Crew
$13.11
Bestseller No. 4
Bestseller No. 5
Why Him? [Blu-ray]
Why Him? [Blu-ray]
The disk has English audio.
$17.81

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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