Of all the sports, football clearly lends itself best to horror. It’s a violent battle and requires players to do things to their bodies that no person would normally do. That’s why those players get paid so much, which then opens up a whole other can of worms. Those points may seem like obvious ways to evoke the horror genre, but it’s not something that happens very often. A horror sports movie? It’s unique.
Him, the new film from director Justin Tipping and producer Jordan Peele, embraces all those things. It follows a young college quarterback named Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) who is mysteriously invited to train with his idol, a legendary quarterback named Isaiah White, played by Marlon Wayans. What Cameron soon finds out is that the price to pay to be the greatest of all time might not be something he’s willing to pay, but he may not have a choice.
The film is now in theaters, and io9 spoke to its director, Justin Tipping, all about it. We discussed that odd mashup of sports and horror as well as the team-up and collaboration with Jordan Peele. Tipping talked about adapting the film’s original script by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers and exclusively confirmed to io9 that there is not an X-Men connection in there, no matter what we thought we saw. Read about all that and more below.
Germain Lussier, io9: I’m a huge sports movie fan so I was very excited to see your film. But I also know that sports movies and genre very rarely mix, and when they do, it’s usually sci-fi. Your Rollerballs. Your Real Steels. So what were your first thoughts when you realized you’re going to get the chance to make a sports horror movie, which is almost unprecedented?
Justin Tipping: I was so excited. I played sports my entire life, a bunch of sports. I got to college and was playing soccer, and halfway through, I definitely was like, “There’s no way.” I was the worst. It was such a ridiculous idea, but it was setting in. So I found film and then became a film projectionist, and found this new thing to put all the energy in. Cinephiled out, you know. So I had this base. I studied film theory, film analysis, and film history. And so I think that basis of film language and history, seeing something like this mashup, I want to take the catalog and the canons and was like, “Wait, there are no comps.” Like I can’t really point to a comp that is told in this way. So I honestly lit up like a kid in a candy store. Like, “Holy shit.”
What that means in a way is there’s a new language that was necessary to do something that’s never been done before. And then that’s exciting. And then you actually get it, and then you’re kind of terrified because you’re like, “Oh shit.” But I think it was the most rewarding thing because everyone involved in the creative process was like, “Yeah, this is going to be tough to crack.” And it was a constant calibration through every part of making this, from development, through shooting, through post, where it was just like one too many jokes from Tim Heidecker at any moment, or not enough camp here, or not enough nuance here, kind of threw the tonal ebb and flow off. So it was amazing and terrifying.
io9: Yeah. I imagine. Do you think the violent nature of football is crucial to making this? Like, maybe not this story, but could you imagine there is a soccer horror movie, a basketball, a baseball horror movie? Or is football just that right balance of messed up?
Tipping: I think having made this one, I could see a path forward for other sports. This one I felt, and told Jordan upon seeing this off the bat, this is perfect because the body horror is inherently built into the DNA of the game. Just the machismo, the ecstasy of victory, the agony of defeat. And these guys are very gladiator adjacent. And there’s a lot of economic narrative, and people just understand that very primal “Two guys smash.” So it lent itself to the perfect fit because of that. And once that was already working, and it’s really just how you lens it, or it’s what you want to show or not want to show of the game, and even the recovery of the athletes, is leaning into the body horror. That was like, “Okay, well, we’ve got that and we can always hang our hats on that.”
But for me, I really wanted to focus on the psycho horror because the psychology of what it takes and the psychology of these professional athletes that do this every week, knowing what they’re risking, knowing what’s on the line, and doing it anyway, what it takes to just push yourself to those limits, opened up a whole other Jacob’s Ladder, The Shining [thing]. But also, it’s a pretty eclectic, I was also making Tyriq watch Holy Mountain, the Jodorowsky. Then Luca [Guadagnino]’s Suspiria. Black Swan and Suspiria have that movement, [as well as] those supernatural elements. It pulls from a lot, I guess. And hitting that Venn diagram in the middle of the sweet spot where we’re servicing both somehow.
io9: Which you can absolutely see. Now, I know you came on board after Jordan and the Monkeypaw team had already found the original script. I’m wondering what changed the most from that initial script to what we finally see in theaters?
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