HIM Is The Worst Get Out Copycat Yet

It’s impossible not to think of Get Out — Jordan Peele’s seminal horror hit, which redefined the genre for better and worse — when Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) steps into the lair of his childhood hero 20 minutes into HIM. The star quarterback he shaped his life around, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), is not nearly as menacing as the villains of Peele’s Guess Who remix. He presents himself as an easygoing mentor, one Cam could have called “unc” if he wasn’t so star-struck. 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. It’s not only because the auteur serves as the producer of HIM, but maybe since it’s also the latest in a long, tedious line of horror films “yes and”-ing the beats and visuals that Peele made gospel in Get Out.

It makes some sense that Peele would swoop in to find a true successor to his horror legacy, especially after stinkers like Opus, Antebellum, and countless others tried and failed to capitalize on the story and aesthetic he made so popular. If the Get Out Industrial Complex must survive, its best chance might come with his direct involvement.

Unfortunately, HIM is not the next Get Out, much as it might dress itself up to be. That it’s got all the subtlety of a bludgeon to the head is just the first of its many flaws; not even Peele can turn this messy Mad Libs horror into a true statement of intent.

Cameron has been summoned to Isaiah’s training compound, a stately art installation in the middle of the desert, for a week of intensive training. It’s a shot he never thought he’d actually get: though he was the star quarterback of his college team, all but guaranteed for a pro shot, a “random” attack on the eve of the NFL Scouting Combine left him with a swollen brain and dozens of staples holding his scalp together. Any further head trauma — like, say, the kind you get on the football field — could end his career before it’s even begun.

Since he’s spent his whole life trying to become what one reporter gauchely calls “the next GOAT,” Cam is standing on the precipice of a justified crash-out when he gets the life-changing call from his agent (a fun, if underused, Tim Heidecker). He’s invited to train with Isaiah, whose contract with the San Antonio “Saviors” (the first of many try-hard allusions to spirituality) is rumored to be lapsing at the end of the season. If he can prove he’s still got “it,” Cam might be next up — that is, if Isaiah can get over his clear fear of being replaced by a younger model.

If anyone can help Cameron bounce back, it’s Isaiah. Fourteen years earlier, Isaiah suffered an injury on the field that should have ended his own career. That proved to be just the beginning for him: he recovered supernaturally (maybe even suspiciously) fast, going on to win eight championships for the Saviors. Isaiah claims that he staged a comeback by digging deeper than he ever had before, by wanting it more than any of his contemporaries. The true answer to his success could be the product of anything, and HIM indulges in every possible ripped-from-the-headlines theory, from something as pedestrian (in the context of this film, anyway) as steroids to the threat of the Illuminati, the specter that follows any Black star when they get too successful.

Tipping seems to have the most fun with the latter, leaning heavily into every corner of the cult angle. Again, none of it is presented with much finesse: the driver who delivers Cameron to Isaiah’s compound makes sure to mention that “his fan club’s like a cult,” for anyone who needs any further context about the rabid fans dressed as goats on the edge of the property. His script, co-written with Black List finalists Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers, tries way too hard to draw preternatural connections to the sport, shoving Christian motifs and allusions to sacrifice (there’s a reason HIM was originally titled “GOAT”) down our throats while turning concerns about race, tokenization, and fetishization — all of which helped make Get Out so great — into empty set dressing.

HIM is only incidentally self-aware about the plight that Black players face in a white-ruled (and enduringly racist) organization. Most of those sentiments come from Wayans: he serves as the de facto dumping ground for the film’s political conscience, turning lectures about the prejudiced origins of the sport into gold just on the power of his own conviction. His charm also goes a long way in turning Isaiah into a real character, not just a cipher embodying HIM’s hidden menace. It’s a shame that we can’t say the same of Withers, who’s adrift in the heady chaos of this script from “go.” His Cam just doesn’t seem to care about anything: not football (or, at least, not enough for Isaiah’s liking), but also not even his family, however fiercely that connection is leveraged to establish his humanity.

As Cam’s seven days with Isaiah turn from promising to unnerving, HIM throws everything it can at its hapless lead. Isaiah punishes everyone in his immediate vicinity to get a rise out of Cam, from the freelance footballers running plays for the day to the drooling, rabid fans lurking on the premises. Paired with the visions Cam’s been suffering since his head injury (a missed opportunity to make this horror story about CTE), our hero is yanked from one trippy encounter to the next with no opportunity to catch his breath.

The problem is, nothing ever seems to affect Cam: he’s a bystander in an ordeal that would send anyone else running for the hills. Cam never fully buys into Isaiah’s violent cult of personality, nor does he make any attempts to escape it, or even to find out what’s truly going on. HIM is already a heavy story; that it’s pinned on such a passive protagonist only sinks the film further. There’s no internal struggle, no desire to take action, no curiosity on his part. The plot only moves forward because it’s so eager to cycle through the next sports metaphor it’s got primed in its back pocket. All Withers has to do is stumble into it, to open wide and let his co-stars spoon-feed HIM’s final, convoluted reveal.

If nothing else, the actor at least looks the part. His bloodshot eyes and bewildered, thousand-yard stare do convey some of the dread that Tipping so clearly wants to pass on to his audience. The director’s images are arresting in the same way a music video might be: robust, crisp, and desperate to prove they’ve done their homework. He plants Withers at the center of a recreation of The Last Supper; pays homage to The Crucifixion with footballs in his hands instead of nails. But HIM is a far, far cry from the masterpieces it wants to imitate. Reaching for something as seminal as Get Out was already a quixotic choice, but its attempts to make some kind of mythic fable out of such a copy-paste horror story was the final nail in its coffin.

HIM opens in theaters on September 19.