Ick Review: Brandon Routh Oozes Charisma in This Genre-Bending Blast
It’s been seven years since Joseph Kahn released his last film, Bodied, a provocative dark comedy about a liberal white kid who unwittingly becomes a legitimate battle-rap competitor. With its irreverent take on woke culture and identity politics and its gleeful demolition of boundaries, Bodied felt years ahead of its time. Kahn’s new film, Ick, feels somewhat timeless despite being clearly influenced by the early 2000s era of MTV – where Kahn made a name for himself as the director of iconic music videos like Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and Eminem’s “Without Me.”
Ick stars Brandon Routh as Hank Wallace, your typical high-school football quarterback who dreams of escaping his small town and joining the big league, with his beautiful cheerleader girlfriend Staci (an aptly cast Mena Suvari) at his side. Hank’s life comes screeching to a halt when he suffers a career-ending injury on the field caused by a mysterious tentacle-like organism known to locals as “the Ick.” In short order, Hank loses his girlfriend and his college deal, and becomes an alcoholic. We learn all of this in a dizzyingly edited opening sequence that showcases what made Kahn such a compelling director in the first place.
Another montage takes us through the next chapter of Hank’s life, working as a janitor at his old high school and taking night classes to become a science teacher. Meanwhile, Staci is happily married to Ted Kim (Peter Wong), her husband and partner in real estate, who may or may not be the father of their teen daughter, Grace (Malina Pauli Weissman). In fact, Staci and Hank had a fling about nine months before Grace was born, and the relationship between Hank and his possible daughter gives Ick a solid narrative backbone for the sci-fi chaos that follows.
The townsfolk have spent years coexisting with the seemingly harmless Ick, which sort of resembles the Venom symbiote and takes on a similarly sinister vibe when it enters a rapid growth stage and goes full body-snatcher. Suddenly, it’s up to Hank to save the town – and his maybe-daughter? – from total annihilation.
