“I love the game, but like so many sports, when watching it I wonder what the hell we’re doing watching this”, Tipping told Zavvi. “This is a violent game, where the stakes are no different from boxing or climbing a mountain – there can be joy or camaraderie, but there’s an inherent sense of danger.
“However, this story was bigger than just football for me; this was about an institution where players become a commodity, and their physicality is their capital. When they’re injured or age out of the sport, they move through the space like worn bodies, and that’s where my point of view was coming from – putting a human face to the dark side of the profit motives behind professional sports”.
Tipping’s body horror stars I Know What You Did Last Summer breakout Tyriq Withers as Cameron Cade, a budding young quarterback who is set back from a potentially major signing after being attacked by a fan whilst training. He’s told that he’s risking permanent brain damage by continuing, but his manager is uninterested in medical advice, instead shipping him to the remote desert compound owned by retired legend Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), who has planned a week-long training course designed to transform him into the next GOAT – it doesn’t go well, let’s say.
It’s any athlete’s worst nightmare, and Tipping fully believes that if it wasn’t for Peele’s involvement as producer, the NFL might have been in touch to get him to tone down his criticisms of the sporting culture.
“We’re taking on the epicentre of American patriotism – the phrase that’s repeated in the movie, “God Family Football”, is such a linchpin to American society. Making a movie that criticised those values did have me worrying that the NFL were going to pull up on me, but when you have Jordan Peele’s backing, it becomes freeing.
“This felt like a rare opportunity to reach sports fans and horror fans, talking to both audiences and getting them to be excited about this other world they didn’t know or appreciate. I don’t see this just as an American story either, I think that ultimately, we’re trying to explore the psychology of what it takes to be great – we're doing this through the specificity of two American quarterbacks, but the underlying theme is universal.
“I certainly went through a period after the pandemic where I found myself questioning how hard I was trying to be a filmmaker, and how much time I was willing to give to the job, never asking if that mentality was benefitting me or making me happy as an artist. If you've ever struggled achieving something you want to pursue in the world, then I think the core of this story translates.”
The director doesn’t even think of HIM as a sports movie, although the earlier drafts of the screenplay – written by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers - were more recognisably in the style of that genre. When Tipping joined the project and redrafted the story, he instead looked at war movies for inspiration.
“The story always had that Nosferatu structure, of arriving at this mysterious house and trying to figure out who this monster really is. The main note on the earlier drafts was that it needed to start as a more relatable Hollywood sports movie so that we could sweep the rug from under people; in that earlier script, Cam had already been drafted by a team, and we changed that to raise the stakes – we needed to justify why he wouldn’t leave the compound so we could do more f**ked up s**t to him!
“As the movie progresses, I was referencing post-Vietnam movies like Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Jacob’s Ladder with the examination of PTSD, but the prologue leading up to that I wanted to style like 90s Nike commercials or an ESPN 30 for 30 special, a familiar sports underdog story which becomes a descent into madness. I was telling my cast to watch The Holy Mountain, a famous acid trip movie, because my intent was never to have the story loop back around into familiar sports territory – this isn’t a story about him becoming a good athlete because he overcame this!”
Every good horror movie needs its monster, but Marlon Wayans isn’t exactly the first actor you’d think of to bring one to life – he's appeared in intense movies before (most notably Requiem for a Dream), but is still best known for the spectacular silliness of comedies like Scary Movie and White Chicks. He needed to go through a brutal training regime to embody the character, but Tipping felt he already had the life experience to understand the character’s headspace.
“I’ve always felt he had a performance like this in him but had never been given the opportunity. One of the main reasons I felt he was perfect for the role is that he’s already a GOAT of the comedy world, and has grown up in a family where that status has been handed down; he talks about growing up and having Richard Pryor coming over to his house, for example, which is a lived experience of fame and success from a young age that made it easy for him to draw from.
“His charisma is the key to his character, he has the natural charm to be funny or seductive at any time, and therefore the power to switch it with a single breath. His relationship with Cam is a narcissistic, abusive one, where he can gaslight the kid by saying two things that are true, but subverting the meaning of one to push him further into paranoia – you're never able to anticipate what he will say next in a way that’s sinister, but also funny, and that’s a difficult balance to strike.
“He’s also a lot older than his character and looks younger, which gave the whole film a Faustian subtext – we just needed to get him physically to a place where he looked like a professional player, rather than find somebody who had those attributes but not the life experience. And we did break him through training, the before and after photos are pretty nuts, but he was happy to be on that journey; he’s been open about being in a dark place when he was offered this movie, and he really got to channel that in his performance.”
As predicted, the film ruffled feathers when released in America last weekend but Tipping loves just how divisive his movie has proven.
“Critics in America have hated it, and it’s not just bad reviews – they're actively angry about the movie. And I love that they hate it, it feels very punk!
“I always knew that because of the political nature of this movie, it would turn some people off, but also that some people would find it and love it because they heard about how much people hate it. I personally don’t mind if you get it or you don’t, because I want to make art that you either love or hate – there's nothing worse than apathy, especially right now, when talk show hosts can get their shows cut for the most minor criticisms of political figures.
“This is the movie I wanted to make, and I made it as a f**k you. So f**k you!”
HIM is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 3rd October.
