Pro Football as Horror Show? It’s Not So Far-Fetched.
In the early stages of creating “HIM,” a new psychological sports horror movie that has Jordan Peele as one of its producers, the filmmakers began researching some of the training elements football players use during practice. They soon learned about the JUGS machine, a contraption with two motorized tires mounted atop a three-legged stand that rapidly shoots footballs at players to catch.
“For us, it was like, ‘Wow, that looks like a medieval torture device,’” said Win Rosenfeld, the president of Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, which was also responsible for “Get Out” and “Nope.”
In one of the more tense scenes in “HIM,” a player stands in front of a JUGS machine, and a football bloodily blasts his face as punishment whenever his teammate messes up a drill.
Memorable sports movies are often triumphant and uplifting. Teammates at a recently integrated high school overcome racism in the post-Jim Crow era in “Remember the Titans.” Sylvester Stallone works out on the steps of a Philadelphia museum to rousing music in “Rocky.”