Oct. 29 (UPI) — A federal judge has disqualified President Donald Trump‘s top prosecutor in Los Angeles, ruling Bill Essayli has been unlawfully serving as interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California since late July.
The order was issued Tuesday by Judge J. Michael Seabright of the Federal District Court in Hawaii, stating Essayli “is not lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California.”
The effect of the order, however, was unclear, as it states that though he may not continue in the role as interim U.S. attorney, he may continue to perform his duties as first assistant United States attorney.
“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing,” Essayli said in a statement.
“I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California.”
The ruling comes in response to motions filed by three defendants seeking to dismiss indictments brought against them and to disqualify Essayli as acting U.S. attorney.
Essayli, who was appointed by the Trump administration, was sworn in on April 2 to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for 120 days.
As his term was nearing its end on July 31, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Essayli as a special attorney, effective upon his resignation as interim U.S. attorney.
In his ruling Tuesday, Seabright, a President George W. Bush appointee, said that Essayli assumed the role of acting U.S. attorney in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which limits the amount of time prosecutors may fill federal positions without Senate approval.
“Simply stated: Essayli unlawfully assumed the role of Acting United States Attorney for the Central District of California. He has been unlawfully serving in that capacity since his resignation from the interim role on July 29, 2025,” he said.
“He is disqualified from serving in that role.”
Despite his ruling on Essayli, Seabright denied the three defendants’ request to dismiss their indictments, stating “the prosecutions remain valid.”
The ruling is the latest going against the Trump administration’s attempts to employ people in high-ranking positions without securing congressional approval.
In August, a federal judge ruled Alina Habba, a former personal Trump lawyer, was illegally serving as acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey after her 12-day interim term expired.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that Sigal Chattah had been unlawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada.
Comedian Becky Robinson’s life has turned into the most insanely fun reality show. One minute she’s screaming into a closet mirror, feeling defeated back in her parents’ house, and a few viral moments later, she’s on The Members Only tour, zipping around country clubs in Oakleys with her tricked-out Streetrod Golf Cart, “sauvi B,” and a sun visor clamped on her blond bob like it’s couture. Her bestie Trish is one call away, her kids Macabee and Dashiell are wrecking the house, her husband Scott isn’t listening (shocker), but her fans-turned-friends, the “Gieurlz,” are. Welcome to the world of the Entitled Housewife. No fancy membership required here because none of it is real, but it’s all so real.
Every story, and character, has a beginning and before she was taking rides on custom carts, she was riding an emotional roller coaster during the pandemic. “So during the pandemic I was with my sister, and she was working at an ER,” says Robinson. “She was in the trenches trying to help people and coming home and you know, might die, and I was terrified because she was coming home from work every day and — who knows? I grew up around Portland, so I had packed up my wigs to go there in case I was going to have a proper ‘Menty-B’ [mental breakdown]. Then even she was like, why don’t you go to mom and dad’s and try to find some form of happiness. So many people were depressed during that time, but I didn’t realize how much I needed to perform.”
While she was stuck at a low point, her parents were somehow in peak vacation mode. “My dad was like, ‘Golf is all we have! You know, we’re golfing all day,’” Becky says, impersonating her father. “He was wearing a golf glove on both hands, kind of like COVID protection, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing my part, you know, I’m not wearing a mask, but I got a golf glove on both hands!’”
Becky Robinson takes the stage as the Entitled Housewife
(Megan Rego)
Her mom shared the same sentiment — not for double-fisting gloves — but she too needed to live. “My mom has kind of been through it health-wise, and so she was like, ‘I don’t want to be locked down. I want to go to happy hour with the gieurlz.’ I just sat there and watched them like, you guys are out of your f— minds. Then one day they left the house, and I just felt inspired. So I put a wig on.”
Robinson went into her parents’ closet and dressed herself in a polo, a skort and a visor. “I put on the Oakleys and the Air Pods and the second I looked in the mirror, I just started improvising. She was like, SCOTT! DASHIELL! MACABEE! [My character] had this element of, she could get frustrated very fast.”
That day, in her parents’ closet, Robinson turned lemons into hard lemonade, and with a visor high on her head like a regal crown, a new version of herself emerged — an entitled one. “I improvised for, like, five hours in character. It might have been a manic episode, I don’t know, but I just remember when the whole thing was assembled that day and I started filming, it was making me laugh and I was like, maybe it’ll make someone else laugh too.”
Initially, she hadn’t planned on posting videos of her in character on TikTok but considering how much she was making herself laugh, it was only a matter of time.
“When I made the first , I was like, ‘I can’t post this. It’s dark times and I’m going to look like such a fool for trying to be funny.’ But then I took an edible and showed my sister to see if it made her laugh because I figured she’s experiencing it every day, in the middle of it, and she told me to post it.”
The debut video of Entitled Housewife got millions of views on social media. As it would turn out, other people needed to laugh at the exact same time. “All these celebrities started messaging me and then Chris Pratt DM’d me and is like, ‘If you make a movie with these characters, I have to be Scott!’”
Robinson’s parents weren’t quite as enthusiastic when she showed them her content for the first time. “I think my dad walked out and my mom was like, ‘You know, Beck, this hits a little close to home.’ She was actually pissed at first because I used the real name of my dad’s country club, and it was so vulgar, so she was worried about him getting kicked out.”
Fast forward to now, and many of these types of golf clubs have booked her for shows and actually pay for her to be vulgar. “So they love it now!,” Robinson said. “People come up to my dad in the store like, ‘Are you Entitled’s dad?!’ He definitely loves the perks because he’s a huge golfer.”
“Some people really think I’m this 50-year-old golf lady with kids, and I think a lot of people think that I started when my character started,” Robinson said.
(Megan Rego)
With her family on board and fans worldwide cheering her on, she’s taking off the wig and going back to her stand-up, but with a touch of Entitlement. Shot at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, her debut comedy special, “Becky Robinson: Entitled,” comes out Friday exclusively on her website and shines a massive spotlight on the fact that Robinson has never needed to lean on props to be funny.
“We’re definitely excited to be releasing on our own platform with entire creative control. The team I work with is so bad ass and they’re really the reason it was all brought to life. I wanted something to give to the fans, and I wanted them to be able to watch it without ads. I want them to see how much they lift me up, so I’m excited to get to release this exactly the way we want it. You know, it’s a little longer than an hour, which streamers don’t like, but the Gieurlz will.”
Robinson has been doing stand-up for 13 years, and that experience shows the second she hits any stage (or bar top). In “Entitled,” you see her stand-up carries the same raw, fearless charge that made her Entitled Housewife sketches a phenomenon. Similar, yet clearly distinct, the two share a flair for the dramatic and an energy that feels almost superhuman. “People are always asking, is it drugs? IS IT?,” Robinson laughs. “In the last couple of years, I got this trainer who is like, ‘You gotta treat this like you’re a professional athlete, OK, because that’s what you’re doing up there!’ For a while, I never listened because we were having fun and it’s just stand-up! And for the first couple of years of touring I would have some drinks and stuff, but now, we’re playing at a level where there are acrobatics involved and cues and high kicks and all these things where injury is very possible. Still, though, when I go out there, I just can’t give them anything less than 200%. Then when I get home, I sleep for 24 hours and then, I’m a person again.”
Should there still be any confusion about Robinson versus Entitled Housewife, in addition to her special, she also released a 30-minute documentary that goes behind the scenes of “Becky Robinson: Entitled.” Also available on her website, Robinson couldn’t be more grateful for her Gieurlz who make this world of hers possible, even if some of them think she’s a bit “seasoned.”
“It took me a while to realize that people see videos and just buy tickets, and that they didn’t even know I was this person who’s done stand-up for 13 years,” says Robinson. “Some people really think I’m this 50-year-old golf lady with kids, and I think a lot of people think that I started when my character started. I feel my funniest when I’m doing characters, and I love that people come out dressed like Entitled, but now more and more people are saying they came for the character, and now they like my stand-up too. You love to hear that so that’s been really great!”
“I wanted something to give to the fans,” Robinson said about her new special. “I want them to see how much they lift me up, so I’m excited to get to release this exactly the way we want it.”
(Tara Johnson)
In no way does that signal the end of the fun with Entitled. This fall, Robinson is taking her skort-wearing alter ego global with her very own golf tournament. From Nov. 6 to Nov. 9, “She Gone Golfing: The Entitled Housewife Tulum Classic” hits the PGA Riviera Maya, Mexico’s No.1-ranked course, with PXG backing the madness. It’s a full-blown Gieurlz escape with golf by day, and karaoke-fueled chaos by night in Mexico’s Riviera Maya.
“This trip is probably gonna take years off my life, but we’re gonna turn it up in Mexico, baby! Let’s get international! We’re gonna get that tequila flowing!” Though the idea of being a golfer may have started out as a joke for Robinson, she’s now become fully addicted to the sport.
“It’s such a fun game and it can relax you when you’re just out there waxing those balls! I really want to introduce more people to it so this will be a fun way to do that. The only reason I’m able to do all of these things is because of the fans coming to see the show, buying the merch, and showing up in the visors. They really are the best!”
A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill Essayli as acting United States attorney in Los Angeles are improper — and, if so, what should be done about it.
During a Tuesday hearing in downtown L.A., Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright — who flew in from Hawaii for the proceeding — wondered how to proceed after defense attorneys sought to dismiss indictments against three clients and to disqualify Essayli “from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”
Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.
His term was set to expire in late July unless he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges. But the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months without any confirmation process.
Seabright was selected from the District of Hawaii after L.A.’s federal judges recused themselves from the proceedings. He questioned the consequences of dismissing any charges over Essayli’s title.
“If I did this for your client, I’ll have to do it for every single defendant who was indicted when Mr. Essayli was acting under the rubric of acting U.S. attorney, correct?” Seabright said to a deputy federal public defender.
“I don’t think you will,” replied James A. Flynn. “This is a time-specific, case-specific analysis and the court doesn’t need to go so far as to decide that a dismissal would be appropriate in all cases.”
“Why not? You’re asking for a really draconian remedy here,” Seabright said, before questioning how many indictments had been made since Essayli was designated acting U.S. attorney at the end of July.
“203, your honor,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins responded.
In a court filing ahead of the hearing Tuesday, lawyers bringing the challenge against Essayli called the government’s defense of his status a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.”
During the nearly two-hour hearing, Flynn cited similar legal challenges that have played out elsewhere. A federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.”
The judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah.
Flynn argued that the remedies in other states “have not been effective to deter the conduct.”
“This court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government’s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn’t gotten the message,” Flynn said.
Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a “weaker medicine” than dismissal with prejudice, “but would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.”
The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli’s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.
Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the “acting” title.
Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”
“The defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,” Robbins said. “But they don’t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.”
Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on “whatever hats you believe [Essayli’s] wearing now” and “whether I were to say he wasn’t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.”
“If I understand the government’s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he’d just be wearing a first assistant hat,” Flynn said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”
“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.
Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of prosecutors quitting.
The contradictions of mixed martial arts brawler Mark Kerr can’t be contained by a ring, an octagon or a film. A vulnerable man with a brutal career, he went undefeated on the mat while struggling in his private relationships and public addiction to painkillers, which he bravely revealed in John Hyams’ 2002 HBO documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.” In that footage, shot between 1997 and 2000, you’re continually startled by how Kerr could clobber his opponents until some lost teeth — putting himself in a mental state he once likened to being a shark in a feeding frenzy — and then after the bell, flash a smile so wide and happy, it split his own head in half.
That’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s whole thing, too: Kill ’em with charm. So it’s as all-natural as his daily diet of organic chicken breast that the wrestler-turned-blockbuster-star would want to play Kerr in his own pursuit of excellence. He’s overdue for a sincere indie movie. Fair enough. Yet bizarrely, Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems,”“Good Time”), working solo without his brother Josh, have decided to simply shoot Hyams’ documentary again.
These two high-intensity talents, each with something to prove, seem to have egged each other on to be exhaustingly photorealistic. Johnson, squeezed into a wig so tight we get a vicarious headache, has pumped up his deltoids to nearly reach his prosthetic cauliflower ears. And Safdie is so devoted to duplicating the earthy brown decor of Kerr’s late-’90s nouveau riche Phoenix home that you’d think he was restoring Notre Dame. In setting out to establish his own style, Safdie just mimics another.
Their version of “The Smashing Machine” tells the same story that Hyams did, across the same years with the same handheld aesthetics and rattle-snap jazz score (by composer Nala Sinephro). It’s stiff karaoke that earns a confounded polite clap. That can’t possibly have been the intention, yet even the songs used as needle-drops are conspicuously borrowed: covers of the country crooner Billy Swan singing Elvis, and Elvis singing Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, Johnson’s Kerr huffs up a set of stairs in a training montage that already belongs to “Rocky.”
Once again, Kerr gets shaken by his first defeat to Igor Vovchanchyn (played by Oleksandr Usyk, the current heavyweight boxing champion) in Japan’s Yokohama Arena, and responds by bottoming out, getting sober and committing to win his next tournament. All the while he bickers with his on-again, off-again alcoholic girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt), who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the ring. A teeth-grindingly mismatched couple, they can’t get through a conversation without arguing. Even trying her best to empathize, she’s overbearing. When Dawn alerts his friend and colleague Mark “The Hammer” Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader in his acting debut) that her battering ram of a boyfriend was drinking before a bout, Coleman snaps at her for letting him act so stupid.
Safdie frames Dawn as a force of domestic destruction (although Kerr tears down doors like wet cardboard). In her introduction, she — horrors! — makes his smoothie with the wrong milk and, a beat later, insists on cuddling the cat on their leather sofa. A shattered Japanese kintsugi bowl is a newly added visual metaphor of their relationship, as is Dawn’s attempt to fix it with Krazy glue, a wink-wink at her emotional volatility. Still, we never understand what holds them together. Blunt is stuck in a reprise of her Oscar-nominated supporting role in “Oppenheimer” as the drunk whose cruelty pardons the male lead’s flaws. Yeah, Mark fizzled in Yokohama, but boy was she awful.
What’s the point? Having stripped away most of the documentary’s narration and sit-down interviews with Kerr’s family and friends, the film barely explores anyone’s psychology — and Blunt’s railroaded Dawn loses her chance to speak for herself. “I don’t think you know a damn thing about me,” she snipes mid-screaming match. She’s right. We don’t know much about her either, nor any of the noisy things onscreen, from the bloodrush of combat to the pull of their co-dependent affair.
We’re supposed to find depth in Johnson’s weary, pinched grin as he appreciates the sunset on a flight to Japan or watches fans at demolition derby cheer just as loudly for mindless chunks of metal getting crushed. He’s quieter than the real Kerr, who could come across like a guileless chatterbox, and when he does talk, it’s often about the control he must exert on his body and his backyard — the diet, the exercise, the sobriety, the gardening — delivered with the conviction of someone giving motivational advice to the manosphere.
If you squint, there’s an idea here that his personal needs set an unyielding tempo in their home, a notion Johnson must resonate with as someone who sets his morning alarm for 3:30 a.m. But we become better acquainted with how light ripples across Johnson’s shirtless back in a tracking shot than with whatever’s going on in his character’s head. More often than not, we’re just watching him walk around in a skin suit of Kerr, trying and failing not to see the movie star underneath. I wonder if Johnson might have channeled the open-faced Kerr better without the fake eyebrows, if he’d trusted his own inner glow instead of immediately going for the dramatic kill.
Look at how dutifully Safdie and Johnson have worked to re-create this world, the movie seems to be saying. Appreciate the intentionally cruddy camerawork by Maceo Bishop that duplicates Hyams’ low-budget limitations. Enjoy how costume designer Heidi Bivens has put Johnson in another silver-buckled black leather belt similar to the one in his infamous, much-memed Y2K-era photo, the one with the turtleneck, chain jewelry and fanny pack. You know without doing the math that, at this time, 39-year-old Safdie was in his early teens, an age that’s a sweet spot for nostalgia. This is his chance to go back to the future. No wonder he doesn’t want to change a thing.
But “The Smashing Machine” should be about change. For the MMA, this was an era of evolution as it transitioned from a contest of raw strength to one of endurance and skill. Former collegiate wrestlers like Kerr and Coleman could no longer win with their signature ground-and-pound techniques. Organizers forbade several of their key moves as their brusque victories weren’t telegenic. Kerr’s early contests often ended in less than two minutes, an oops-I-missed-it-grabbing-a-beer brevity that would have made pay-per-view buyers grumble. Headbutts were disallowed in part to draw the action out, and also because John McCain didn’t want what he called “human cockfighting” on TV.
These underlying tensions were just coming into focus. The original documentary felt blurry because Hyams didn’t yet know how the off-camera legalities would play out. He would have never guessed that the once-maligned Ultimate Fighting Championship league, purchased in 2001 for $2 million, would become a powerhouse with the clout to ink a $7.7-billion television deal just this summer. He also didn’t know that the cash payments Kerr earned in Japan would be revealed to have the yakuza’s fingerprints on them, or that Kerr’s opioid addiction was start of a burgeoning national health crisis that would soon have America in a chokehold.
Surely, Safdie with his two decades of perspective and his own knack for movies about hard-charging, charismatic screwups like Adam Sandler’s gambling addict Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems” has something to add? Nope, just tell the same tale twice.
Hyams stopped filming in May 2000, at a point when it appeared that Kerr had chosen love over war. Safdie is aware that Kerr would live on to make more choices and that love doesn’t win, either. But despite the benefit of hindsight, Safdie doesn’t seem to have considered that the old narrative no longer fits. He just updates the title cards on the end: a sentence about Kerr and Dana’s future, a note that today’s MMA stars are better paid, a point undermined by a shot of the actual Kerr climbing into an exorbitantly glossy new truck. Turns out Kerr has been a car salesman for the last 15 years, but you wouldn’t know that leaving “The Smashing Machine.” You wouldn’t know why this movie existed at all.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is transformed by prosthetics for his Mark Kerr roleCredit: AP
WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.
Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.
In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.
Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.
He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.
A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.
Acting muscles
And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.
But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.
American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.
We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.
But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.
Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.
Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.
Screen beauty Emily Blunt shows off stunning figure in backless dress at London premiere of Smashing Machine
The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.
As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.
While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.
Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.
But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?
They just might.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(15) 112mins
★★★★★
3
Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia WalkerCredit: PA
KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.
The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.
The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.
Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.
The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.
Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.
It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.
LINDA MARRIC
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HIM
(18) 96mins
★☆☆☆☆
3
Retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans, pictured) invites Cameron to a secluded training campCredit: PA
HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.
In short, this is a mess.
The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.
When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.
But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.
Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.
Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.
Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.
Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.
