When you’re delivering a horror comedy that predominantly contains the kind of ruthless, acid-witted teens that lean more into Heathers territory than the sort of students you’d usually find in Clueless, you’d better make sure that your movie that has energy to spare – otherwise your target audience will eat you alive faster that a shoal of puberty suffering piranha. However, when it comes to director Joseph (Torque, Detention) Kahn’s new film, Ick, a lack of energy doesn’t prove to be the problem.
Essentially demanding that you simultaneously mainline the 80s Blob remake, The Faculty and Slither directly into your eyeballs while the tone of the film force feeds a Pro-Plus/Monster Energy Srink cocktail down your throat, Ick’s maximalist leanings attempt to pound it’s mixture of social commentary, laughs and thrills into you whether you’re ready for it or not.
Once a respected quarterback in high school back in the 2000s, Hank Wallace has seen his life suffer some pretty wild ups and downs. Not only was his spiraling drink problem affecting his performance on the field, but his girlfriend, Staci, leaves him for the nerdish Ted Kim and his promising football career implodes in an instant when he trips over a branch of the Ick and shattered his leg. I’m sorry, what’s that you’re asking? What’s the Ick? Well, obviously it’s a weird form of benign, parasitic plant that’s sprung up absolutely everywhere over the last few years – only no one pays it any attention any more and just carries on with their lives as if it won’t suddenly become malevolent and try to choke the world.
Years pass, and Hank painstakingly manages to first turn his life around by attending AA and getting sober, and then attends classes to eventually become a science teacher at his old school. However, life just can’t stop throwing the odd long pass at the poor schmuck and just when he seems to have things all figured out, he discovers that there might be a very real chance that Grace, one of his students and the daughter of Ted and Staci, might actually be his biological child which would be an unsurpassed earth staggering revelation if not for one thing – the Ick has become active and is attacking, killing, and in some cases, even possessing the people of Eastbrook.
After the initial attack which sees a house party decimated by the killer weed, the military moves in to deliver the bad news, there simply isn’t enough resources to protect every city from the Ick, so Eastbrook is going to have to fend for itself while they busy themselves with salvaging a more useful town. But as Hank simultaneously tries to find a way to kill the Ick while gently breaking the news to Grace that her lame science teacher may also be her dad, the Ick continues to grow.
As Ick goes out of its way to be as frenetic and frenzied as it possibly can, there are numerous wonderful ideas clambering to try and escape the tangle of flash fire editing and rapid fire dialogue that is delivered so quick that subtitles are required viewing. However, for much of Kahn’s movie, any plus point soon finds it has something of an impossible job when it comes to presenting anything without it getting swamped in the movie’s hyperactive tone. Anyone who has seen the climax of the director’s all-but-forgotten, 2000s actioner, Torque, Kahn’s aggressive, excitable style often leaves the events onscreen utterly incomprehensible unless you have access to slo-mo or even the script. Unfortunately, for a lot of Ick, nothing is given much of a chance to breath and countless jokes, moments, sequences and performances are crushed to death in the rush – but if you can manage to decipher it, there’s actually nuggets of gold trying to push through the thrashing vines.
For a start, it’s weird that a film so fidgety would have such a laid back actor as Brandon Routh in the driver’s seat, but thankfully, the actor’s old, amiable, Clark Kent nature proves to be an indispensable asset that forces the film, at times, to slow the hell down and actually focus on some vital character stuff. In fact, for a film so centered on matching the TikTok blitzed attention spans of a younger audience, it’s weird that the main character is an older dude, but Routh manages to barely just be heard over the screams, snark and countless 2000s needle drops that seemingly kick in every three minutes. Ick also has a few things to say about the youth of today in a hyperverbal version of classic high-school tropes. Marina Weismann’s Grace adds a world weary, Daria-esque view of the world as she totters toward nihilism even before the killer plants make a play for civilisation and Harrison Cone also goes all as his boyfriend character mocks right-on, punchable, high-school posers.
Aside from attempting to skewer and spoof the typical attitudes of teenage life, Ick takes aim at some post COVID jokes too, jabbing at various hindquaters of society with the use Ick deniers, fake news accusers and people simply refusing to acknowledge that they simply have to change their way of life if they’re going to survive this dangerous new normal. It’s hardly a set of jokes that’s subtle, but again, it’s another one of the rare elements that manages to break the surface of the torrent of smash cuts and rapid fire visual puns. Still, you have to be weary of a horror/comedy that fails to make an exploding cow funny…
Kahn manages to find a slightly more comfortable tempo with the Ick attack sequences which actually benefit a little bit more from the breathless momentum as the titular plant monster – which noticably looks more like the Blob than Audrey II – does its stuff and wipes out huge swathes of extras. Yes, some of the visuals aren’t quite up to the task, but in the absence of that Blob reboot that’s been threatened for yonks now, the sight of the Ick lashing out with Lovecraftian tendrils and turning people into milky eyed, bile dripping slaves is actually pretty cool, if a tad derivative. However, at no point during the film did I stop thinking that I’d rather be watching one of the movies it’s emulating instead. During the scenes of small town monster movie politics I couldn’t stop hoping for the heart of James Gunn’s Slither; when the film focused on smart-ass kids taking control, my thoughts wavered to Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty and any time the Ick did its rampage thing, I yearned for the sweet, slimy embrace of Chuck Russell’s The Blob. However, I will say this, I’ll take the Ick over the similarly themed Y2K any day as at least you can tell that the former is trying.
However, regardless of its attempts at satire, horror and a spot of heart as nice guy loser Routh struggles to connect with his daughter, the film just can’t help but constantly trip itself up by attacking all of its themes and quirks at 100 miles per hour when a slightly more measured approach could have caused the laughs to grow like a weed.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 