"But his environment tells a different story: he's surrounded by Greco-Roman statues and suits of ancient Gladiator armor, with the skins of goats (which he may or may not have slaughtered himself) stretched out across every wall. This is a warrior, one who approaches a sport as ruthless as football with even more outsized intensity. This is also a man who clearly has something sinister up his sleeve, who will likely do anything - maybe even some perverse body-swapping ritual - to stay on top."
"Isaiah's first impression, and the mismatched decor of this space, tells us everything we need to know about HIM - though the odyssey that follows offers little in the way of artistic cohesion. The supernatural sports horror has Peele's fingerprints all over it: His name, and the reputation that comes with it, has been used to promote the film more than that of its actual director, Justin Tipping."
Cam enters the lair of his childhood hero Isaiah, whose Greco-Roman statues, Gladiator armor, and goat skins reveal a gladiatorial, obsessive approach to football and a sinister readiness to stay dominant. The film mixes supernatural and sports-horror elements and leans heavily on the reputation of a prominent horror filmmaker to market the movie. Despite striking visuals and a mentor-turned-villain setup, the narrative lacks artistic cohesion and fails to coalesce into a satisfying successor to recent social-horror exemplars, offering more imitation of familiar beats than original, cohesive storytelling.
Read at Inverse
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