{"id":304547,"date":"2025-07-30T18:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T18:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/304547\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T18:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T18:17:11","slug":"sports-horror-him-is-friday-night-lights-meets-nosferatu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/304547\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports Horror HIM Is Friday Night Lights Meets Nosferatu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinema is awash with horror movies, and there have been plenty of sports movies over the years too. But rarely have the two genres mixed \u2013 until now. Make way for HIM, the latest film from Jordan Peele\u2019s Monkeypaw Productions stable, by director and co-writer Justin Tipping \u2013 an American football spookfest, in which Tyriq Withers<\/a>\u2019 young player Cameron Cade gets more than he bargained for under the mentorship of Marlon Wayans\u2019 seasoned quarterback Isaiah White. A serious commitment to becoming the GOAT looks set to lead to bloody consequences.<\/p>\n

For Tipping, the film offered the chance to establish a familiar sporting milieu, before sending the whole thing to hell. \u201cMy instinct was to set it up in a way that it feels like we\u2019re in Friday Night Lights, or a Gatorade or Nike ad,\u201d he tells Empire. \u201cWe\u2019re rooting for the kid who just needs to unlock one thing to take it to the next level. And then we subvert the expectations and let it become Nosferatu<\/a> or Ex Machina<\/a>, and let it evolve or devolve \u2014 depending on your sensibilities \u2014 into something it\u2019s not.\u201d The psychology of shooting for sporting greatness comes with all kinds of potential pitfalls that Tipping can mine for scares. \u201cOnce I started leaning into some of my favourite horror \u2014 which would be more in the vein of a Jacob\u2019s Ladder<\/a> \u2014 the creative floodgates just opened,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

For Peele, HIM is exactly the sort of film he created his production company to make. \u201cAt Monkeypaw, we love ideas that shouldn\u2019t be made and that we\u2019re not supposed to touch, and the combination of sports and horror was something I had never quite seen,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was just clear that we had a genre mash-up that was right up my alley.\u201d Hopefully, in the niche realm of sports horror, it\u2019ll end up being the GOAT.<\/p>\n

\"Empire<\/p>\n

Read Empire\u2019s full HIM feature in the Avatar: Fire And Ash issue<\/a> \u2013 on sale Thursday 31 July. Order a copy online here<\/a>. HIM comes to UK cinemas from 3 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cinema is awash with horror movies, and there have been plenty of sports movies over the years too.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-304547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114943560879341608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}