Cade and White then fight each other, with Cade becoming victorious after he bashes White in the head with a football helmet. Cade exits the room, evoking the idea of exiting a dark football tunnel into the light of the field, where the team owners and his agent are sitting in a row with animal masks, chanting. This is the scene from the trailer that depicted Cade as Jesus on the cross.
White’s influencer wife Elsie is sitting behind a Bible-esque book, and all make it clear they expect Cade to sign a contract with the Saviors. It is then that Cade’s agent reveals these powerful people have been grooming Cade for this moment since he was a child.
When Cade hesitates, one of the owners threatens to kill Cade’s family if Cade refuses to sign. Instead, Cade uses his god-like strength to murder all of them, except for the agent, who is mysteriously dragged onto a pentagram that is in the middle of the field; the agent explodes as Cade walks away. Thus the movie ends.
So the evil people who manipulated Cade get their comeuppance. But Cade, through the power of the blood, has also become “Him” and taken violent vengeance. He rejects being controlled but does not reject the evil he was pushed toward throughout the story. He ends the film as an evil Christ-figure.
What Does It Mean, and Should Christians See It?
Director Justin Tipping, who is also one of the film’s co-writers, has described the movie as a “Faustian cautionary tale.” Regarding the dangers of professional football, Tipping mentioned the athletes who continue to push themselves despite repeated traumatic injuries (something clearly referenced in the movie) and said that the game “can be joyful and beautiful and all those things…it’s the business around it that gets insidious.”
“HIM” has been criticized for having an incoherent plot and heavy-handed imagery. It seems that Tipping’s intent was to use that imagery to portray how sinister it is when people push themselves or others too far in the service of football.
Regarding whether or not Christians should see it, Promise Keepers CEO Shane Winnings thinks the demonic imagery draws a line believers should not cross. Speaking to ChurchLeaders in May, Winnings acknowledged that “before I was a born-again Christian, I might’ve been really interested in this.”
RELATED: Promise Keepers CEO Shane Winnings Warns Christians Against New ‘Demonic’ Movie
“There’s something in people that wants to, you know, see something scary or something dark,” he said. “There’s this fascination with the demonic.” But he believes that what we put before our eyes and ears affects us whether we realize it or not.
“When you’re showing a guy standing on the pentagram doing that, when you begin to cross over the realm of educating into entertaining, using demonic stuff, that’s where I draw the line,” said Winnings.
“Could there be a lesson in it? Sure. There’s lessons in, you know, almost everything that people produce,” he said. “But this is not an educational piece of film by any means.”
“It’s an entertainment piece,” Winnings continued. “And I’m trying to warn people to say, ‘Don’t go get entertained and fascinated by dark things.’”
