Justin Tipping, the director of new horror movie Him, has teased it as being "almost like Nosferatu or Ex Machina... just with two quarterbacks" – but not for reasons you might expect.
The football players in question aren't secretly vampires or eerily sentient robots (or we don't think they are, at least?) Its similarities lie more in its delivery, tone, and themes, as the filmmaker says that the mysterious flick is a "very contained, very simple" exploration of toxic masculinity.
"It was a genre mashup I'd never seen," Tipping recalls in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features Predator: Badlands on the cover and hits newsstands on Wednesday, September 10. "I told them right off the bat I felt like there's a Venn diagram that's in play here when it comes to sports and horror, and if everything is somehow hitting, that's like a new language.
"Kicks [Tipping's previous movie] was the exploration of toxic masculinity around commodity fetishism and this object that defines you," he continues. "For me, Him was the maturation of the exploration of toxic masculinity. I'm older now and have a more definitive point of view, so this movie is about what happens when the athlete is the commodity and the institution is moving their body around as disposable."
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Produced by Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, Nope), Him follows Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), a talented, young football player who's invited to train at the remote compound of NFL legend Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). There, he's pushed to the limits both physically and mentally, as Isaiah "takes his protégé on a blood-chilling journey into the inner sanctum of fame, desire, power, and pursuit of excellence at all costs", according to Universal's official synopsis. Julia Fox also stars.
"Whether you're a writer or you make music, you can get very solipsistic and lost in a world of, 'No, but I have to do this,'" Tipping says of the pitfalls of some passions. "At a certain point, it's like, how many birthdays and weddings and weekends did you miss, thinking that if you just sacrificed that time, it would somehow prove something? Ultimately, I think that's a myth I want to debunk. You don't need to be an asshole to be great at something."
Him releases on September 19 in the US, and October 3 in the UK. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, September 10. Here's the Predator: Badlands cover you need to be looking out for on newsstands below...
Let the hunt begin! Our battle-world exclusive #PredatorBadlands cover feature is on sale 10 September. Get it, before it gets you!@DannyTRS pic.twitter.com/t5VmoVNqjTSeptember 4, 2025
