"A rock-brained football horror movie that's as subtle as being sacked by a 300 lb. defensive lineman and somehow only half as much fun, Justin Tipping's " Him" is a single idea stretched out for half the length of an NFL broadcast (spoiler alert: half of an eternity is still an eternity). That idea: What if football was literally a religion? Holy shit."
"Self-evident as that concept might be to anyone who's ever heard of America, there's no denying the potential of a bold genre film that dared to confront the dehumanizing barbarity of our country's most profitable sports league; the pronounced indifference it has for the health of its players, the structural racism that continues to undergird the entire apparatus, the short-term riches it offers in order to offset the true cost of pursuing immortality. "Him" is not that film."
The film literalizes the idea of football as a religion, imagining chosen-one narratives, zealous fandoms, and Sunday worship as a demonic inversion of Christianity. The premise invokes player sacrifice, devilish contracts, and the brutal costs of sporting immortality. The film gestures toward critiques of player health negligence, structural racism, and the league's profiteering but never follows through. The script leans on nattering characters and shallow setpieces, delivering mediocrity rather than sustained critique. Visual and tonal choices culminate in a final, kitschy Super Bowl–style sequence that feels like surrender rather than revelation.
Read at IndieWire
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]