Marlon Wayans' 2025 Horror Movie Flop Is Finally Finding An Audience On Netflix

Justin Tipping's 2025 horror freakout "Him" is "The Wicker Man" via the NFL. It stars Tyriq Withers as a football hopeful named Cam Cade, who has dreamed of sporting greatness since he was a small boy. He's especially fond of the (fictional) San Antonio Saviors, headed by the all-time-great quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). As a boy, Cam used to pound his chest and yell, "I'm HIM!" 

Fast-forward to the present, and Cam is now teetering on the brink of a career upturn. Weirdly, right at the film's outset, Cam is unexpectedly bashed in the head by a mysterious figure in a full-body Satanic goat costume while training alone at night. Cam is encouraged to continue his training in a specialized Saviors facility, way out in the desert. Brain injury be damned, this is a great opportunity. Cam travels to the cloistered, high-security training camp, which is overseen by Isaiah White, now on the brink of retirement. 

The camp, however, is a surreal nightmare experience. Everything is strange and threatening, and Cam's training is painful and weird. He has to ignore an athlete getting smacked in the face with footballs — causing grievous facial injuries — as Cam tries to conduct a play on the field. It becomes pretty clear early in "Him" that Cam is being groomed for some sort of bizarre football-related Satanic rite. 

"Him" wasn't well-liked by critics, garnering a mere 31% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 229 reviews. It also wasn't a hit at the box office, grossing just $28 million on a $27 million budget. It is, however, finally getting some attention on Netflix, according to the FlixPatrol website. It seems "Him" is one of the top-ten most watched movies on the service. Perhaps audiences will have a different reaction. 

Of course, "Him" might have been a tough sell in its very concept. There are very few sports/horror movies in the world, if you don't count the fact that Jason Voorhees wears a hockey mask . The subgenre doesn't have a lot of in-born fans, it seems. Also, "Him" is a very oblique, surreal movie that presents more questions than answers. There's a scene partway through the movie wherein Cam is attacked in a sauna by a super-fan, and Isaiah murders her in defense. He explains calmly that this sort of thing happens all the time. While Cam is suffering from a brain injury, he seems to take a lot of the weirdness in stride, justifying it by thinking that it's all necessary to succeed in football. 

The theme of "Him" is obvious from the start: modern American football has become so well-moneyed, and the played so deeply worshiped by the public, that it has come to resemble a Satanic cult. There's no way, the film posits, that football players could have become as renowned as they were without a supernatural assist from the Dark Lord. And, of course, the owners of football teams are more than happy to make blood sacrifices to make sure their players win and their teams rake in more money. 

It's not a particularly deep theme, but it's at least salient. Football is overmoneyed. Sadly, the film doesn't probe too much deeper than that. "Him" climaxes in a very strange and very bloody confrontation involving Cam, Isaiah, and ... well, I had better not say. I can say that there's a squad of nightmare cheerleaders present at the climax, adding to its surreality. 

There is a distant notion at the end of "Him" that white football owners are in the business of commodifying Black bodies, and that all-too-familiar racial exploitation still lurks in the heart of many American endeavors. Sadly, that idea isn't explored very deeply either. "Him" is content to keep viewers off-balance. Some of the strange cult-like, nightmare sequences seem to be weird for weird's sake. Marlon Wayans, at least, gives a very good performance as a football star who has vanished into the intricacies of his own fame. In a more penetrating drama, Wayans' performance would have been more appropriate. 

It cannot be denied, either, that "Him" is stylish and conceptually ambitious. It was produced by Jordan Peele, who also oversaw Nia DaCosta's 2021 sequel "Candyman," a film that was also jam-packed with ideas to the point of being a little sloppy. I personally disliked "Him," but I am not faulting the film for its sense of stylish urgency. "Him" has something it desperately wants to say. My issue is that it was frazzled and unclear in the way it said it. 

/Film's Chris Evangelista gave "Him" a positive-ish review, writing that Wayans, "who has never really been as good as he is here, [turns] in a performance that's both incredibly fun and undeniably unsettling." He also noted that he was "totally vibing with the gonzo energy the film was throwing out, and to its credit, the movie clocks in at a brisk 96 minutes and never feels long in the tooth." 

Evangelista noted that the ending was a letdown, however. Now that "Him" is being seen by more eyeballs, perhaps there will be a critical re-litigation. After all, the film is so kooky, there may be more to dig through.