“HIM” Director Justin Tipping Breaks Down Horror, History, And Hidden Easter Eggs

American football has always been compared to the American slave trade, from the way they recruit to rumours of exploitation. In the film, we see that from the health checks to literal “White Saviours”, ie the team name. What were the initial sparks that led you down that path of conversation?

Justin Tipping: Well, you’re spot on. Discussions and discourse around the NFL and how they treat Black players have always existed, and I knew of it; I just did more research when taking this on. Looking more in-depth at the history and how it started was fascinating; it blew my mind. So it felt more like putting a mirror up, I didn’t even have to try, this is just what happens. But consciously taking it on, you think: okay, but how do we do it in a way that’s not didactic, but seated in the genre itself?

When I pitched to Jordan [Peele] and MonkeyPaw, at first they came in saying explicitly yes, this is a psychological thriller about what it takes to be the greatest of all time, but implicitly I wanted to tackle what happens when the athlete becomes the commodity and they’re moved through institutions and their bodies are just bodies, they’re discarded. So it’s just inherent in what we were all exploring once that became the horror, things like the combine is just ripped from headlines, that’s what happens.  The most intense, rigorous, most invasive possible thing you could do is enter the NFL combine, and have every possible statistic and things about you looked over. It could mean the difference between tens of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, depending on the smallest details compared to other people.