Horror movie drops the ball

HIM criticises the brutal sacrifices of the US's National Football League, but poor storytelling keeps it from becoming the genre hit it could've been

- Kibo Ngowi

I had been looking forward to HIM for months. The first trailer intrigued me because I had never seen a horror film set in the world of American football. When I later found out Jordan Peele was involved, I was sold.

But here's my first complaint — the marketing was deceptive. The campaign leaned heavily into Peele's name, going so far as to create posters stacking his directorial hits (Get Out, Us, Nope) in neat vertical order before tacking on HIM at the bottom, as though it were his latest release. The problem? Peele didn't direct this film, he produced it.

That kind of positioning is a disservice to the actual director, Justin Tipping, who has to contend with audiences walking in expecting a Peele movie and walking out feeling duped before they have even given him a chance.

Fortunately, I knew about this before stepping into the cinema.

Unfortunately, what I discovered was a film that fumbled its promising concept with an incoherent, confusing story.