A teacher discovers his favourite student might be his daughter as his town is over-run by an alien lifeform.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joseph Kahn
Starring: Brandon Routh, Mena Suvari, Malina Weissman, Harrison Cone, Jeff Fahey
Joseph Kahn's Ick is a throwback to the sort of '80s horror comedies that were themselves throwbacks to the sci-fi b-movies of the '50s. Its two most obvious influences are Chuck Russell's remake of The Blob and Fred Dekker's outrageously entertaining Night of the Creeps. From the former it takes what initially appears to be a harmless substance that ultimately turns deadly. From the latter it takes a middle-aged hero pining for his best days as a younger man and the teenage sweetheart he lost along the way.
The film opens with an energetic montage that details the rise and fall of high school hero Hank (Brandon Routh). Hank is a walking American cliché, the star quarterback who dates the prettiest cheerleader (Mena Suvari's Staci), but his potential football career is ruined when he breaks his leg during a game. Taking a job as janitor at the very school that once revered him, Hank eventually ends up becoming the school's science teacher.
Cut to the present and Hank is still stuck in the past, wondering how differently things might have gone were it not for that damn injury. He still pines for Staci, whose teenage daughter Grace (Malina Weissman) is now his favourite pupil. When Hank crunches some numbers regarding Grace's date of birth, he becomes convinced that he's her real father, sending off a paternity test in the mail to find out for sure. But before he can learn the truth, Hank has to deal with "the Ick," a plant-like life form that suddenly sprouted from the earth all across the planet a couple of months ago. Despite the general public's apathy regarding this invasive species, it does inevitably turn deadly, massacring humans like a Triffid on crack and turning others into rabid animalistic killers. As their town falls apart around them, Hank becomes determined to protect Grace, who is none too happy with the possibility that her science teacher might be her dad.
Routh's involvement might be dismissed as stunt casting. Just like Hank, Routh peaked in the 2000s when he was plucked from obscurity to play the lead role in Superman Returns, but his career has languished since. Routh was fantastic in that movie, but given the involvement of Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey it's not hard to surmise why Routh might have wanted a break from Hollywood after the experience. If the casting of Routh here is an extratextual gimmick, it's one that undeniably pays off. Routh has natural charm and a handsome hangdog vulnerability that makes him an unconventional hero we can really root for. Centring the film on a potential father/daughter dynamic rather than the usual nerd/hottie pairing of such fare makes Ick stand out from the b-movie crowd, and Routh and Weissman are am engaging pairing.
But aside from its leads and some spot-on nods to the cringiness of noughties pop culture (Kahn's background in music videos is evident in the opening montage, which could be mistaken for a Fountains of Wayne promo), Ick has little else going for it. Kahn evokes Sam Raimi with manic editing and camerawork, but the use of CG rather than practical effects makes it all too weightless, and we're left to pine for the days when movies like this employed mad geniuses like Screaming Mad George and Rob Bottin to deliver gloriously gooey gore. The Covid allegory at the core of the film is somehow both heavy-handed and superficial, with nothing new to say on the subject other than "weren't a lot of people dumb?"
Fans of '50s b-movies, their '80s descendants, or bad 2000s pop-punk will be mildly amused by the nostalgic nods, but it's Routh's performance that makes the greatest impression, and hopefully this will give his career the boost he deserves.
Ick is on UK/ROI VOD from August 25th.
