Ick TIFF Review — Brandon Routh Kills It in Rushed Horror-Comedy

Filmmaker Joseph Kahn (Detention, Bodied) introduced the world premiere of his latest film, Ick, by explaining that he had just finished his cut of the movie the morning before. It doesn’t take a discerning viewer to tell how rushed this movie was, as the “final” product is wildly uneven. Although there is certainly a good movie to be found here, Kahn could have used two to three more months in the editing room to refine everything to a more presentable level.

Ick Review

Ick is a horror-comedy that follows a high-school science teacher who becomes obsessed with the “ick,” a seemingly harmless substance growing throughout his small town that he claimed ruined his life by injuring him on a football field in his heyday. Of course, his suspicions prove to be true as the ick begins to take over the city and its residents.

The first third of the film is a ton of fun — especially the almost ten-minute-long opening montage that contains as many early 2000s needle drops as possible. It’s an intriguing concept that seems like the setup for a fun eco-horror by way of Evil Dead midnight movie. It sadly does not deliver.

Unfortunately, the movie goes significantly off the rails after about 40 minutes — and not in an admirably bonkers way. There are several jumps in the story in timeline and logic, with Kahn cutting to black between these sequences. This gives the film an even more incomplete feel, as the narrative choppiness almost resembles the type of near-incoherence one would see while watching a rough cut of a movie for a test screening. There have been more complete work-in-progress cuts to play at festivals to drum up buyer interest.

The movie’s back half is also where its technical aspects begin to fall apart. The needle drops and campy production design do a lot of heavy lifting in the first third to make the movie enjoyable. When it becomes much more CGI-dependent in its later portion, focusing more on the eponymous “monster,” it goes beyond silly and cartoonish to become downright incredulous.

Ick is no less messy when it comes to the themes it explores. Throughout the film, there are some incredibly overt political references, such as one character spouting right-wing rhetoric about the eponymous organism. However, these never really amount to much other than recurring gags or one-off jokes. It’s also frustrating that the ick never serves as a symbol for any sort of moral the audience should take away from the story.

Kahn’s script also struggles to straddle the line between satirical and archetypal with its characters. The intention here is obviously to use the tropes of a genre and time of film that’s long passed. However, it embraces some of these tropes so shamelessly that it doesn’t feel effective as a riff on these conventions.

That being said, despite being given a character that is not interesting whatsoever, Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) once again shows his fantastic charisma. He’s funny and charming as hell in Ick, playing against type as incredibly awkward as opposed to the heroic turns we might be used to seeing him play.

Routh is the only person in the cast who makes much of an impact. The teens that comprise the rest of the ensemble feel just as disposable as their characters are to the story. There are cameos from some recognizable faces, like Mena Suvari, but they aren’t particularly memorable.

Is Ick worth watching?

Ultimately, one has to wonder if the prestige of appearing at this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness was enough for Joseph Kahn to justify rushing out his latest film, Ick, in a hurried state. Perhaps the intention was to build up buzz and garner buyer support to touch up the effects and finance a recut or reshoots, but this version of the movie didn’t seem ready for public consumption. It’s not a bad time, but its flaws tend to be incredibly frustrating.

Ick screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 5-14.

Written by Sean Boelman

Articles Published: 210

Sean is a film critic, filmmaker, and life-long cinephile. For as long as he can remember, he has always loved film, but he credits the film Pan's Labyrinth as having started his love of film as art. Sean enjoys watching many types of films, although some personal favorite genres include music documentaries, heist movies, and experimental horror.