Grammy-winning director Joseph Kahn offers moviegoers of all ages something special with Ick, the sci-fi horror comedy with no shortage of laughs, life lessons, and suspense; all of it riding a nostalgic pop, punk, and rock music-fueled soundtrack straight into a cliffhanger that’s certain to leave you wanting more.
“I wanted to make something you can take your entire family to go see,” Khan tells me. “I’m not trying to scar anyone. Ick leans into comedy and horror. It’s a nice mix of both. It’s a thrill ride.”
Kahn certainly makes it easy to root for our hero Hank (Brandon Routh). When we meet him he’s a (de-aged) prom king whose hopes of marrying his prom queen girlfriend Staci (Mena Suvari), moving out of their small town of Eastbrook, and becoming an NFL superstar, à la Tom Brady, are dashed by a gruesome leg injury.
Fast forward, their fates forever changed, Staci never realizes her NFL wife dream and settles for her high school side piece Ted (Peter Wong). They have a daughter Grace (Malina Weissman) and are big fish in Eastbrook’s small pond.
Hank, meanwhile, is a down on his luck, 45-year-old alcoholic orphan who owns a bar and teaches science at the same high school he once ruled. Grace, who may or may not be his daughter, is one of his pupils.
“I got to cast Superman and break his leg,” Kahn says of Routh, adding that his film Scott Pilgrim proved Routh possessed “incredible comedic timing.”
American Beauty star Mena Suvari was a dream casting. “We’re not going to get Mena Suvari,” Kahn recalled thinking at the time. “But it all worked out serendipitously.”
The film’s other main character is, as the townspeople call it, “The Ick,” a harmless weed-like substance that’s slowly surrounded every inch of the town for twenty years.
“I was thinking what monsters mean today,” says Kahn, who pines for the days where Hollywood made movies like Dracula, King Kong, and The Blob. He fears the days of family-friendly horror like Gremlins and Ghostbusters may be gone for good.
“That little small town feel of America, where an invasion of something is happening. It just seem like Hollywood gave up on that idea. We used to make these movies all the time.”
‘The big question back then was what happens when the monster comes into your town,” he says. “Usually people bond together and fight the monster. I think if a monster comes and attacks a town today, people will ignore it. Would people come together? Or would they break off into factions?”
On its way to pitting our heroes in a final battle against the now ever-growing and hungry ick, Kahn cleverly satires the town’s right-leaning conspiracy theorists and big government skeptics while making woke teens the unintentional butts of their own gender-wannabe vegan-climate-doomsday-fueled jokes. It’s all sincere, good-natured fun.
Ick grapples with aging, parental love, and the importance of family (Hank lost his mom when he was young and watched his father die a slow death), and explores what adults do when they realize their childhood dreams won’t come true in the way they had imagined.
And it’s all done to a greatest hits soundtrack of Millennial youth. The self-funded film features nearly two dozen chart-topping bangers, Kahn says, handpicked by him.
“I called in a few favors,” Kahn tells me from Monaco, explaining how, for instance, Blink 182’s “All the Small Things” made it into his film.
Ick is also incredibly composed. “It’s the secret weapon of the movie,” Kahn says beaming with pride that Ick was scored with a full orchestra. “It took about a year of working with the visual effects team for an hour and then another hour with the composers.”
Kahn, who has won Grammys directing music videos for some of music’s biggest artists from Taylor Swift, to the Backstreet Boys, to Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Rob Thomas, Chris Brown, Kelly Clarkson, and, of course, Mariah Carey, had grand designs for ICK. He wrote the script in 2017. In 2019, he was shopping it around to studios as a $100 million blockbuster monster movie. Then COVID happened.
“I moved to Texas. Around the end of 2022, I decided to shoot the film myself. ‘The monster is so complicated,’” he recalls thinking at the time, knowing going the independent route would be hard.
Ick was shot in 2023. In the fall of 2024, he brought Ick to TIFF and other film festivals. And set a summer 2025 release.
“That’s how long it’s taken to get this movie to the people,” he says, adding that it’s all been beyond worth it.
The movie, Kahn says, is about “parental love,” with the big question being “is Hank the father or isn’t he. But he’s taking on the position of a father. If, say for instance he’s not Grace’s father, does he drop her like a hot potato? Of course not,” Kahn says. “Once you chose to become a parent to somebody, blood or not, that’s humanity. So at a certain point, the journey is done for Hank. He’s now a parent.”
Ick hits theaters nationwide July 27, 28, & 29! You can find more ticket information here.
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know About Trump. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter and instagram@jeromeehudson
