When Justin Tipping’s HIM premiered on September 18th, 2025, it arrived with considerable expectations and a substantial budget behind it. On paper, the film seemed positioned for success—a Monkeypaw Productions and Universal Pictures collaboration with a $27 million investment and a cast featuring Marlon Wayans, Tyriq Withers, and Julia Fox. Yet what unfolded tells a more complicated story about what audiences actually want from horror and mystery cinema in the mid-2020s, and what happens when artistic ambition doesn’t quite connect with the zeitgeist.
The financial trajectory of HIM is worth examining not as a failure narrative, but as a revealing case study. The film barely crossed its production budget, earning $27,834,512 globally against its $27 million outlay. That razor-thin margin masks a domestic performance that disappointed early projections. The opening weekend netted just $13.8 million when estimates had targeted $18-20 million—a significant shortfall that immediately signaled audiences weren’t rushing to embrace whatever Tipping’s vision entailed. By the second weekend, it found itself displaced at the number one position by Demon Slayer, a franchise entry that proved more conventionally appealing to multiplex crowds.
> “Greatness demands sacrifice,” the film’s tagline promised—but perhaps the sacrifice was too demanding, or the vision behind it wasn’t clearly communicated to potential viewers.
This commercial hesitation raises interesting questions about what HIM actually is as a film. Positioned at the intersection of horror and mystery with a runtime of just 1 hour and 36 minutes, Tipping crafted something decidedly lean and purposeful. There’s no fat here, no bloated runtime—which could suggest either surgical precision or rushed execution. The 5.8/10 rating from critics suggests the latter interpretation gained traction. That’s genuinely middling territory, the kind of score that indicates a film couldn’t quite cohere, that it reaches for something it doesn’t quite grasp.
What’s fascinating is where Tipping positioned this work within contemporary horror. The film emerged during a period when the genre itself was fragmenting—Monkeypaw Productions had been involved with successful genre fare, bringing credibility to the venture. Yet HIM seems to have operated as neither fish nor fowl, not quite committed enough to pure horror spectacle, not quite developed enough as mystery to sustain dramatic tension over its brief running time.
The Cast and Execution
Marlon Wayans brought star power and comedic instincts to a project that apparently needed grounding in ways his presence couldn’t entirely provide. Wayans’ filmography in horror-adjacent material is inconsistent—he’s capable of surprising dramatic depth, but the tonal landscape of HIM doesn’t seem to have allowed him to locate that register. Tyriq Withers and Julia Fox, meanwhile, were positioned in supporting capacities, their talents deployed but not necessarily showcased in ways that would generate lasting cultural memory.
Why This Matters to Cinema’s Evolution
Beyond its specific failure to connect, HIM represents something worth understanding about contemporary studio filmmaking. Here’s what the film’s arc tells us:
- The streaming-era audience is selective: That opening weekend underperformance suggests theatrical audiences increasingly demand films that feel unmissable or counterprogramming against dominant franchises
- Mid-budget horror faces existential questions: At $27 million, HIM occupies uncomfortable territory—too expensive to absorb losses gracefully, too smaller to command franchise nostalgia or recognition
- Mystery-horror hybrids remain challenging: The genre has produced hits, but finding tonal equilibrium remains notoriously difficult
HIM will ultimately be remembered, if at all, as an interesting misfire—the kind of film that festivals might program as a curiosity, that critics might revisit when examining 2025’s box office landscape. The Monkeypaw Productions involvement means it carried artistic intentions; the Universal backing meant it was trying to reach audiences. That it satisfied neither particularly well is the lasting story here.
The film’s legacy, such as it is, might serve as a cautionary tale about overextending resources on projects without clear audience demand signals. In an era where horror franchises dominate (as evidenced by Demon Slayer‘s performance), original concepts require either a much smaller financial footprint or a much clearer cultural resonance. HIM achieved neither, landing in that graveyard of forgotten mid-budget releases that briefly occupied multiplexes before yielding to the next wave of established properties.
What Tipping attempted—that sacrifice the tagline references—ultimately didn’t feel worth the investment, either creatively or commercially.
