It has been seven years since Joseph Kahn launched his final movie, Bodied, a provocative darkish comedy a few liberal white child who unwittingly turns into a professional battle-rap competitor. With its irreverent tackle woke tradition and identification politics and its gleeful demolition of boundaries, Bodied felt years forward of its time. Kahn’s new movie, Ick, feels considerably timeless regardless of being clearly influenced by the early 2000s period of MTV – the place Kahn made a reputation for himself because the director of iconic music movies like Britney Spears’ “Poisonous” and Eminem’s “With out Me.”
Ick stars Brandon Routh as Hank Wallace, your typical high-school soccer quarterback who desires of escaping his small city and becoming a member of the large league, together with his lovely cheerleader girlfriend Staci (an aptly forged Mena Suvari) at his aspect. Hank’s life comes screeching to a halt when he suffers a career-ending harm on the sector brought on by a mysterious tentacle-like organism identified to locals as “the Ick.” Briefly order, Hank loses his girlfriend and his faculty deal, and turns into an alcoholic. We be taught all of this in a dizzyingly edited opening sequence that showcases what made Kahn such a compelling director within the first place.
One other montage takes us by the subsequent chapter of Hank’s life, working as a janitor at his previous highschool and taking night time lessons to grow to be a science trainer. In the meantime, Staci is fortunately married to Ted Kim (Peter Wong), her husband and accomplice in actual property, who could or will not be the daddy of their teen daughter, Grace (Malina Pauli Weissman). In reality, Staci and Hank had a fling about 9 months earlier than Grace was born, and the connection between Hank and his doable daughter offers Ick a stable narrative spine for the sci-fi chaos that follows.
The townsfolk have spent years coexisting with the seemingly innocent Ick, which form of resembles the Venom symbiote and takes on a equally sinister vibe when it enters a speedy progress stage and goes full body-snatcher. Abruptly, it is as much as Hank to save lots of the city – and his maybe-daughter? – from whole annihilation.
Messed-Up Enjoyable for (Virtually) the Complete Household
Ick
3.5
/5
- Launch Date
-
July 27, 2025
- Runtime
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104 minutes
- Director
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Joseph Kahn
- Writers
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Dan Koontz, Joseph Kahn, Samuel Laskey
- Producers
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Steven Schneider, Adi Shankar, Joe Heath, David Kang
- A splendidly acted horror comedy that seems like a throwback to the early 2000s.
- Genuinely humorous and self-aware with some very likable and memorable characters.
- The particular results are a bit amateurish and it may’ve used a tighter edit.
Introducing his newest movie, Kahn stated he got down to make one thing he may get pleasure from together with his preteen daughter. Ick matches the invoice higher than most makes an attempt at wide-ranging style fare: it lacks the cloying qualities of typical family-friendly films, and it is genuinely humorous with out taking itself too significantly or making an attempt to be overly intelligent. Whereas the movie’s eponymous menace is a enjoyable metaphor for the methods through which younger adults get trapped of their hometowns after highschool, it by no means feels preachy or paternal.
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Kahn places a recent spin on the garden-variety assortment of high-school stereotypes – there’s an endearingly shy goth woman, a reasonably boy who (hilariously) weaponizes woke tradition to get laid, a misunderstood inventive loner, and Grace as our relatable dejected protagonist. Anchoring all of it is Brandon Routh, who’s effortlessly charming as a form of everyman, working-class hero. Along with his immense likability and wonderful comedic timing, Routh’s efficiency in Ick is harking back to Bruce Campbell or John Ritter – there’s one thing basic about his attraction.
Ick Is a Pleasant 2000s Time Capsule
The soundtrack is full of recognizable hits from the period, principally of the pop-punk selection: Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional, Fountains of Wayne (you’ll be able to’t have a personality named Staci and not embrace “Stacy’s Mother”), Plain White Ts, and Creed – the latter of which makes for a very humorous needle-drop. Millennials will probably be particularly thrilled and/or disturbed by a cameo from former MTV host Carson Daly as an Alex Jones kind who spouts off completely insane conspiracies in regards to the Ick.
Think about a live-action Junji Ito adaptation on late ’90s or 2000s-era MTV, and you have Ick. The visible results may use some refining, and the enhancing, which begins at a frenetic tempo earlier than lastly settling right into a groove in the course of the second half, may additionally profit from one other cross. That stated, there’s by no means a uninteresting second in Ick, which modernizes a basic premise earlier than sticking it in a time machine and sending it again to 2006.
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As a filmmaker, Joseph Kahn is at all times shocking. He made his characteristic debut with 2004’s Torque, a satirical motion movie starring Martin Henderson and Ice Dice that was largely derided on the time. Seven years later, Kahn returned with Detention, an R-rated sci-fi horror comedy starring Josh Hutcherson, a few group of teenagers who use time journey to defeat a assassin who’s emulating a serial killer from a film. Detention was each late to the postmodern horror pattern and wildly forward of schedule for its inevitable revival, to say nothing of Hollywood’s present obsession with the multiverse. In 2017, Kahn gave us Bodied, which once more felt forward of the curve and sudden given his earlier options. With Ick, Kahn continues to show himself as unpredictable as he’s singular.
From Fathom Leisure, Ick debuts in choose theaters on July 24, with a nationwide enlargement on July 27.