Despite clever marketing and an intriguing premise, HIM is an absolute fumble. HIM gives off the feeling of importance, but everything in it is vacuous. First off, the story: a mismatch of plot threads and ideas that don’t cohere to much of anything. It so badly wants to be a movie with something smart to say about… I’m not exactly sure.
The most obvious guess is cult of celebrity/fan culture, but the extent of this is so literal it dilutes any commentary this brings to that conversation. Being too preoccupied with creating atmospheric moments, the film also hand waves any logic about characters, motivations, etc. At no point in the film do we have a clear idea of where we are at in the story or where we’re going.
The desperation also translates into the directing and visual stylings of the film, which felt to me as though a person input an AI prompt to ask for “how to make a scary scene.” Similarly to the jumbled structure, the visuals felt like a series of vignettes aimed to unnerve the audience, but rather I just felt bored. Now, I’ll give director Jake Tipping a little credit for interesting usage of X-ray and infrared, but aside from that the “scares” felt so contrived.
Some may say this is Marlon Wayans’ turn into dramatic acting, but I would argue this performance is directly in his lane. His weird, manic performance felt no different than zany characterizations he’s brought into his sketch comedies (never in my life did I think I would draw a line from HIM to White Chicks).
Tyrian Withers is fine; unspectacular in this year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer and similarly so, here. I didn’t realize that Julia Fox was in this film. Her inclusion should have clued me in that this movie was going to be a disaster.
Being a massive fan of the horror genre, HIM was just brutal to watch. Usually there are nuggets of goodness you can identify from a film, but am hard pressed to find one for this. In the film, Marlon Wayans frequently asks “what are you willing to sacrifice?”
And to that, I would say, this movie.
