Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions has made a name out of turning everyday institutions into nightmare fuel — suburbia (Get Out), vacations (Us), blockbuster spectacle (Nope). Now, with HIM, Peele and company aim their gaze at America’s true religion: football. HIM takes the feel-good sports movie and slams it helmet-first into ritual sacrifice, cult vibes, and pure fever dream madness.
Helmed by genre newcomers, director and writer Justin Tipping (Kicks), and writers Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers (creators of the hit audio drama Limetown), HIM takes the all-American sports movie and twists it into a fever dream of violence, obsession, and sacrifice.
The cast mixes familiar faces and left-field surprises: Julia Fox (Uncut Gems) as the influencer wife of a legendary quarterback, Marlon Wayans in a deadly serious role that recalls his Requiem for a Dream days (while slyly winking at his horror parody roots), and rising actor Tyriq Withers (I Know What You Did Last Summer) as Cameron Cade — the college QB whose dream of greatness descends into hell.
Fun fact: Tyriq Withers played as a wide-receiver for the Florida State Seminoles in 2017.
The Premise
Cameron Cade (Withers) is a star quarterback with everything ahead of him—until a brutal attack by a deranged fan leaves him with a traumatic brain injury. Salvation seems to arrive when he’s invited to train with Isaiah White (Wayans), a championship legend worshipped as the greatest of all time. But inside Isaiah’s isolated home compound—where he lives with his enigmatic wife Elsie (Fox)—Cameron discovers that greatness demands more than talent. It demands sacrifice.
What begins as a sports mentorship story morphs into a surreal horror tale about obsession, power, and what athletes give up—body, mind, and soul—for the game.
Anti-Sports Horror
While horror has flirted with athletics before (All Cheerleaders Die, The Fan, Rollerball, Battlefield Baseball), HIM goes for something bolder: not just sports in horror, but sports as horror. Football drills become rituals. Training montages warp into cult-like ceremonies. And the worship of the “GOAT” turns disturbingly literal - something demonic, horned, and hungry..
Fun fact: Marlon Wayans older brother Damon Wayans starred in 1991's anti-sports crime-thriller The Last Boy Scout.
Trailer Breakdown: From Friday Night Lights to Fever Dream
The trailer smartly begins like an inspirational sports film: Cade meets his idol, trains with him, declares his desire to be “the GOAT.” (Fun fact: Originally titled GOAT, the name had to be changed to HIM because the SONY animated basketball movie being released in 2026 already claimed the title.) We see the familiar imagery—weight rooms, passing drills, locker room speeches. Then, like a blitz, the horror takes over.
Religious Parallels: Cade’s team is called The Saviors, a name that hints at devotion… and doom. One “sacrificial lamb” bears a chest tattoo reading Faith, while football itself is worshipped like Sunday Mass. Isaiah White straddles the line between coach and cult leader, his bloodied jersey evoking a martyr on the cross. Even a press conference mirrors the Last Supper, turning everyday spectacle into ritualized terror.
Hail Mary: The film weaponizes the phrase on every level: a ball-launching device, the legendary long pass, and a prayer for salvation. Tupac’s “Hail Mary” pulses through the trailer, echoing the tension between violence, faith, and the desperate hope for redemption.
Violence: Football has always been brutal, but HIM literalizes the damage. X-ray sequences reveal concussive trauma and bleeding skulls. In one drill, a “voluntary sacrifice” absorbs endless footballs to the face whenever others drop a catch. Later, Isaiah's eye swells and bleeds, and Cade himself is suffocated under a taut plastic bag.
Visions: Cade’s training spirals into nightmare. In the desert, he fires spirals at crucified dummies, only to peel back one's mask to reveal his own laughing face. Figures with footballs for heads stand sentinel. Red-lit scenes of temptation dissolve into carnage. Masks leer from the walls. The line between dream, ritual, and hallucination blurs until nothing feels safe.
The Occult: Goats, long associated with ritual sacrifice in religion and cults, underscore the irony of a “sacrificial creature” leading a cult. The football field becomes an altar: painted with a pentagram. Cade stands in front of a structure marked with the alchemical symbol for the Philosopher’s Stone — transformation, unity, perfection at a cost. A pig-headed figure sprays blood during a beating. Elsie (Julia Fox) drifts between priestess and sacrifice. Cade is bludgeoned by a horned demon, only to later clutch its decapitated head in bloody triumph.
The Final Play: The trailer’s climax suggests Cade must defeat Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) in a series of gladiator-like trials. By the last shot, he emerges onto the ritualized field framed by faceless cheerleaders, arms spread in a Christ-like pose at the center of the pentagram. In that moment, the title HIM reveals its double meaning — both deity and demon.
Why We’re Hyped
Horror is always best when it digs into what a culture worships. And in America, nothing gets worshipped harder than football. HIM isn’t just a sports movie with some spooky seasoning — it’s about the cult of athletic greatness, the violence we cheer for, and the way idols devour their followers.
This September 19th, forget tailgates and pep rallies. In HIM, the game isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about sacrifice. Literal sacrifice.