Since his last feature, 2018’s underrated “Bodied” (still his best), Joseph Kahn has directed music videos for Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, and more. The “Torque” director has always had a confident vision that works extremely well in 4-to-5-minute bursts. Even in his films, he loves to edit to the rhythms of the music happening behind the action. It can be very visually engaging, but his latest sinks under the incongruent desires to pay homage to horror films of the past and the bygone relative naivete of the 2000s, while also making dozens of statements about “How We Got Here.” The COVID allegory at the foundation of “Ick” is obvious, but Kahn’s most interesting themes reflect how often we ignore the problems at our doorstep until it’s too late. The problem is that the sociopolitical underpinnings of “Ick” feel relatively shallow and borderline sadistic, leaving viewers with a hollow “Blob” riff with too little to hold onto regarding character, setting, or even horror. It’s impossible to get your fingers on it.
The opening montage plays like a music video Kahn might have directed for a band like All-American Rejects as we meet high school superstar Hank (Brandon Routh) in the prime of his life. He is King of his smalltown high school, the handsome young man who not only gets the touchdown but dates the most popular girl in town in Staci (Mena Suvari, doing a de-aged “Teenage Dirtbag” riff), who you just know has that name so Kahn can get more satisfaction out of using a certain Fountains of Wayne song. When an injury derails his career, Hank loses Staci and his social clout, ending up teaching at the high school he once ruled many years later. Staci has a daughter with another man, and that daughter lands in Hank’s science class in the form of Grace (a solid Malina Weissman), a teenager who knows she’s gotta get out of this weird town but she’s at least going to enjoy her youth while she can.
Which is not long! Even back in Hank’s QB days, there was an underground presence in town known as “Ick,” a sort of tree-like growth that goes from looking like harmless roots to looking like harmful alien tendrils just in time to rip apart a kegger that Grace happens to be attending with her friends. The centerpiece of “Ick,” the party sequence, is a fun chance for Kahn to let his freaky side out as kids get possessed, destroyed, or both by the Ick. Only Hank seems to know what’s going on—science teacher and all—and he’s determined to find a way to destroy the Ick before it turns the entire town into zombies.
Kahn’s most complicated ideas come from the repeated suggestions that no one but Hank is taking the Ick seriously. The idea that something was always there, bubbling under the surface of the population, before it took hold and changed everything feels like a reach for commentary on the divisions of the 2010s and 2020s but it’s a bit underbaked. It’s essentially about people ignoring the rot at the heart of something, even annoyed in the first act that this alien presence isn’t acting out. “Is the Ick gonna DO anything?” Famous last words. Even after the Ick becomes a killing force, people argue over its value and place in society, and how to handle it. The allegories become a bit aggressive.
With echoes of COVID and MAGA discourse, it’s not hard to draw a few parallels but Kahn isn’t exactly an overtly political filmmaker, more interested in rhythms of editing than sociopolitical musings. He seems way more amped about using five cuts to get a teenager from standing to sitting than anything “Ick” might have to say, and that music video sensibility gives his film a shallow cynicism, like a Creed song that thinks it has something deep in its lyrics but is really only interested in the hook.
The biggest problem is that Kahn runs out of ideas before he runs out of lineless locals to decimate. So he starts repeating them to new 2000s tracks. Before it ends, “Ick” starts to feel cruel. Look at these idiots say dumb shit about the Ick and then get torn apart by that which they underestimated. We get it. Let’s just bring on the Ick and end all this division. But with that kind of nihilism, “Ick” the movie has to land somewhere enlightening, and this one can’t quite find a satisfying final note. Just watch “The Faculty” instead.
