Ick

Grade: B-

Ick brings to mind memories of the low-budget creature feature of Sting and the certain time period nostalgia of Y2K. The late 90s for that movie, and early 2000s for Ick. I found Ick to be the best of the three, yet it is the one that slinks in and out of theaters for a couple days as a Fathom Event, unseen/unreviewed by most critics – while the other two got regular wide releases. Go figure.

Everything in Ick is a heightened, cartoonish version of reality. Much of it takes place at a high school – with off-color, irreverent intercom announcements from the principal, like in Bottoms. Director Joseph Kahn’s credits include more than 100 music videos – for Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, and so many others. His cutting style for Ick can be annoying and ADD-inducing, but when it works well (and it does more than half the time), it’s candy for the eyes and ears, and has momentum. The artificiality of everything is somewhat endearing. Most of the locations are quite obviously sets. In the nighttime scenes, even the stars in the sky look fake, and they probably are.

One thing that, surprisingly, doesn’t look cheap and – to my untrained eyes – is believably accomplished is the de-aging of the stars. When I first saw the trailer, which features Mena Suvari in a cheerleader outfit, I thought it was a reissue of a long lost Suvari flick from 20+ years ago. The movie begins in the year “2000-something” as we meet Hank (Brandon Routh – the title character from 2006’s Superman Returns) and his girlfriend Staci (Suvari). Hank is a popular quarterback at the local high school. He’s on top of the world, but his lofty aspirations for the future get squashed when, during a game, he trips over something weird on the field. Staci moves on to someone else (a classmate), who she ends up marrying. Meanwhile, Hank’s injury must have been a bad one, as he’s still limping and wearing a Forrest Gump style leg brace in the year 2020-something.

In the present day, Hank is a science teacher at his alma mater high school. One of his students is Staci’s daughter Grace (the wonderful Malina Pauli Weissman). After learning Grace’s birthday, including the year, he does the math and realizes there’s a strong possibility that he is Grace’s father. Trying to find this out is one of the MacGuffins. Now, let’s get back to that weird thing Hank tripped over. It’s called the Ick. There’s no origin story for it, which is fine. It wasn’t there, then all of a sudden it started being there. It grows and comes up out of the ground, like a rotten vine or root. Sometimes it possesses people, and other times it just kills them. I laughed when I saw the Ick-infested cow maniacally mooing in the middle of the road.

We find out, pretty early on, a secret weapon to use against the Ick. It doesn’t make it go away permanently, but it’s a way for society to keep themselves safe, while they live with this new normal. Sound familiar? This is an obvious allusion to a certain virus from 2020. With that plot point already resolved, we are left with the eye/ear candy – particularly the banging soundtrack. Growing up, I had the American Graffiti and Forrest Gump soundtracks crammed down my throat. Understandable. There are some great songs on there. I’m certainly not comparing Ick, as a film, to American Graffiti and Forrest Gump, but the songs (from the likes of The All-American Rejects, Blink 182, Creed, Fountains of Wayne, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Plain White T’s) will take people of a certain age back to the time when arms were wide open, and somebody’s mom had it going on.

They say humor comes in threes. There’s a gag that happens twice, and then gets one more callback right at the end, for a perfect abrupt jump to the end credits. I almost feel, excuse me, icky that I liked Ick enough to recommend it. It’s nowhere near serious, upstanding cinema – and somehow BECAUSE of that, there’s a very innocuous charm to it. It’s a throwaway, but, y’know…use it once before throwing it away. It’s crap, but, y’know…take a quick peek and admire it before you flush it.

Grade: B-