{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?! EVERYTHING! Then show me. Are you HIM? Is Austin Reaves screaming \"I'm HIM\" HIM? Is HIM HIM? I mean, not really. It's an interesting, ruminative fever dream about race, sacrifice, the toxicity of sports (American football in particular) and the casual acceptance of violence as a prerequisite of achieving greatness. While it is a horror movie, what HIM grapples with is more horrifying than any of the blood and violence it's covered in. I've never enjoyed American football. I've never understood the rules and I've never found it interesting. It's uniquely American and, in that, it's uniquely brutal. All sport requires sacrifice to achieve at the highest level and it all carries with it risk of injury. It doesn't all require skull to skull violence and a legacy of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. What does that sacrifice really get you? Best case, it yields generational wealth and, even if you fall short, it yields significant wealth. It also yields permanent, nagging injuries and a brief tenure at the peak. So, Cameron Cade sacrifices everything at the altar of brutality masquerading as sport. His father forces him to watch Isaiah White suffer a gruesome injury as an example of what's required for greatness. He's injured in pursuit of becoming HIM, the GOAT. An unwilling head injury that may well rob him of the opportunity to be paid piles of cash in return for willing ones. And who better to induct Cameron into this world than the universally regarded GOAT in Isaiah? Greatness requires sacrifice. It requires a fanatical devotion to your craft and that devotion either breaks you or breaks you out. If it's the former, you're forgotten. If it's the latter, the possibilities are limitless (until you leave the field — the arena). You're showered with praise, fans worm their way into your life and your sauna. The parties are exclusive and you're surrounded by adoration and celebration that finds you becoming the object of worship, the accidental leader of a cult. Is any of this real, though? Is it a fair bargain? Do Elsie's orifice-bound crystals actually work? Or was that blow to the head far more severe than its made out to be? : He's not. But he is a testament to achieving more than what's expected of you until it stops becoming overachievement and becomes a baseline. : That White plays for a team named the Saviors is not lost on me. Neither are flashes of earlier mascot iterations that resemble something you'd see at a klan rally. : Easily the best performance of Marlon Wayans' career.",
  "path": "/watching/movies/him-2025",
  "publishedAt": "2025-10-08T13:50:00Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:sttgf52vkk46f6yuknvqxvgh/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "mystery",
    "horror"
  ],
  "title": "HIM"
}