ICK (2024)

New streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Joseph Kahn.
Written by Samuel Laskey, Joseph Kahn, Dan Koontz.
Check out the trailer here!!

Brandon Routh plays Hank, a former small down football hero from Eastbrook High who suffered a career ending injury which shattered his dreams of going pro and dating cheerleader captain/prom queen Staci (Mena Suvari). But that was a long time ago, the 2000’s to be exact, and now Hank is a recovering alcoholic and a science teacher at the very high school he peaked in and keeps on finding new valleys to fall into. But aside from being a typical small town in America, Eastbrook is also infested with an alien substance called the Ick. Everyone knows about the Ick. It has been a substance that has grown in Eastbrook, and around the country for ages. No one knows where it is from or what it’s purpose is, but humanity has simply ignored and walked over this dirty substance for years. But something is wrong. The Ick is beginning to become active and infest the humans that have long since taken it for granted.

Director Joseph Kahn helmed the school-zombie film DETENTION as well as a ton of music videos from big names like Taylor Swift, Eminem, and Shakira, among others. One can tell Kahn was a music video director by the frantic pace ICK moves. The film moves whips through a whole lot of lore and even more pop punk songs of the 2000’s era in the first fifteen minutes. It helps set the tone of the time, even though music videos were long since dead by the time the 2000’s came around, rapid editing was the flavor of the era and this intro really doesn’t have a shot that lasts more than a few seconds, which makes for a frantic watch. But since we are absorbing a lot of information at the beginning, the pace makes it all digestible.

I don’t know why Brandon Routh doesn’t get more roles. He’s got some great comic timing and handles drama well too. Here he is given a rather cliché role as the has-been who may or may not be the father of one of his students, Grace (played by Malina Pauli Weissman). The film plays with the is he or isn’t he the father concept throughout the film as the emotional element while Routh’s Hank takes on the Ick and Routh handles this lead role with ease. It was also fun to see Mena Suvari basically playing the role of a grown up version of her role in AMERICAN BEAUTY.

But the beauty of ICK is that it is a strong metaphorical commentary on basically every issue that America has faced over the last ten to twenty years. The Ick is global warming. The Ick is MAGA. The Ick is socialism, conservatism, and liberalism. The Ick is COVID and the vaccine. The Ick is woke-ism and anti-woke-ism. Director Joseph Kahn ingeniously makes the Ick both sides of every timely argument we’ve encountered since the 2000’s. Reminiscent of an episode of SOUTH PARK, where no political side is safe and no subject is taboo, ICK highlights how, no matter what the problem, someone is going to find some way to fight about it. Some of the people won’t believe that the Ick is a problem, while others just want to ignore the problem. The military comes in to take on the Ick and tell the people in the community that they need to shelter-in-place because of this threat, but the parents are more concerned about making sure their kids have the perfect prom. And though at times, it is just used as background noise, if you listen to the daily announcements in the school, it’s some of the most ridiculous, but hilariously on the nose commentary on the youth culture of the day you’ll see. This is some really smart storytelling one usually doesn’t see in this divisive day and age, able to look at the current era we live in from an objective yet biting sense of wit and humor.

If there is a weakness to ICK, it is that it becomes rather formulaic by the end. The film is so full of interesting ideas and has so much to say about modern society at the beginning, but during the climax, things get rather cliché in order to wrap up things. Still, the trip there is fun as hell.

The Ick effects itself are decent most of the time but occasionally feel like bad CG. The climax of the film happens at night, because the Ick moves and grows in the darkness and these scenes are often too dark. So dark that occasionally, it’s impossible to see what is going on. This might have been done to cover up some not-so-perfect CGI.

Nevertheless, ICK is one of the smartest horror comedy’s your going to get. If you don’t find it funny, you’re too entrenched in the divisiveness and need to unclench. I highly recommend this movie that snuck past my radar last year when it was released, but I’m glad I discovered it now. See ICK. It’ll make you think, tap a toe, and laugh a lot.