Devil's in the details in 'Him'

Justin Tipping's sports horror film scores on production value, but its plot falls apart.

- AMY NICHOLSON

"HIM" stars a diabolical and fit Marlon Wayans.

"Is football a game or a religion?" sports broadcaster Howard Cosell once asked with exasperation.

The horror film “Him,” a striking but vacuous gridiron Grand Guignol by Justin Tipping (“Kicks”) takes it as faith that the answer is both. Any fan with a sacred good luck ritual and any player who's thanked the man upstairs for a touchdown knows the two overlap as tightly as a freshly laced pigskin.

In the home of young elementary schooler Cameron Cade (Austin Pulliam), the fictional San Antonio Saviors quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is the messiah. Next to the TV, there's even a shrine with devotional portraits of their icon. When White wins a game while suffering a nasty injury, Cameron's father seizes the moment to deliver a sermon: "That's what real men do," he insists. "They make sacrifices." The candles on the altar flicker ominously.

Tipping, working from a Blacklist script by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers with Jordan Peele as his producer, considers the sportsas-religion idea so obvious that the film doesn't bother analyzing why it exists. Instead, "Him" wonders what kind of spiritual practice it is: hero worship or a sinister cult? Fourteen years later, Cameron (now played by Tyriq Withers) has grown up to become a star college quarterback in line to be the NFL's top draft pick and take over Isaiah's position on the Saviors. A violent concussion knocks him off course, but Isaiah, a living legend still leading the team, offers to vouch for the kid if he passes a private training camp at his desert estate. It couldn't be more obvious that Isaiah doesn't have Cameron's best interests at heart if he blared a warning on the Jumbotron.