“HIM” was on released Sep. 19, 2025, hyping itself up as a “horror film” produced by Jordan Peele. Now, putting Jordan Peele’s name in any movie is bound to make that movie boom with views on release, but he was only a producer, which brings me to the first problem with “HIM.”
You would think such a major horror movie, which is basically the first of its kind, would have some great acting, but the acting wasn’t the most pleasing to see. For Marlon Wayans being the comedian and playing the protagonist, he had trash jokes and was trying to be really outgoing with his role. It was more like he was trying too hard instead of trying to stick with the funny Marlon Wayans we know. He was acting like this was his first role.
Another big problem was the message “HIM” was trying to deliver to the audience. It was trying to deliver messages like identity and the high cost to greatness or success. “HIM” did deliver a great message throughout the movie, but none of the messages are really explained or shown in the movie, so the movie has to clump all of them up because it decides it doesn’t have enough time to go into detail.
Which brings the next problem, the extremely fast pacing of the movie. I mean, every time we see a character, they’re on the screen for maybe 2 minutes besides the main character and the antagonist. We don’t dive deep enough into both Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) and Cameron Cade’s (Tyriq Withers) stories enough to get an attached feeling towards them and feel their ambition, or any feelings for that matter. The amount of weird jokes in the movie is also a different watch from others as there are times where jokes in the movie don’t make sense.
This brings me to the final problem of “HIM,” the “horror aspect” of the movie. Don’t get me wrong, the director and the choreographers did an amazing job bringing random surprises in play during the movie, but aside from that, the movie has no sense of horror at all. I mean, compared to classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Get Out, this movie doesn’t bring scary horror to any of its scenes. It is more like this: face-paced scene, unfunny joke, mysterious feeling scene, jump scare, and unfunny joke. The movie creates a fake sense of horror by creating a low sense of personal safety and security while in the compound (where most of the movie takes place) but it isn’t immensely scary, even for the average high school student.
With a twist of a lot of weird timed scenes, this movie is a cool watch for something quick you don’t really put care in, but for movie reviewers and a 31% TomatoMeter from Rotten Tomatoes, I think everybody included should forget about this movie and try to find a new role that might help their personal image.
