Movie Review: ICK

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 24th, 2025 / 03:09 PM

THE ICK movie poster | ©2025 CAA Media Finance

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Mena Suvari, Jeff Fahey, Harrison Cone, Debra Wilson, Taia Sophia, Peter Wong, Zeke Jones, Diya Rao, Aaron Valentine, Jack Seaver McDonald
Writers: Samuel Laskey & Joseph Kahn & Dan Koontz
Director: Joseph Kahn
Distributor: CAA Media Finance
Release Date: July 24, 2025

ICK has a premise that is great in itself, and is also a great metaphor for so many real-world things: a phenomenon that seems like merely an odd nuisance spreads so gradually that people accept it as a fact of life until it reaches its next stage and becomes a menace – at which point, many people simply refuse to believe anything has changed.

This is “the Ick,” a life form that grows like a plant, with roots and spikes, yet has a fleshy quality. It also has a habit of catching things in its curlicues.

ICK the movie begins in “2000 Something,” when Eastbrook high school quarterback Hank Wallace (Brandon Routh) is on top of the world. He’s happily involved with adoring prom queen Staci (Mena Suvari). Hank’s bar owner dad (Jeff Fahey) encourages him to leave town after graduation and make something of himself, and Hank is looking forward to a football scholarship.

But it all comes to an abrupt end during the big game, when a tendril of Ick grows up out of the field and grabs Hank’s ankle.

In the aftermath, Hank loses his football and college prospects, along with Staci, who dumps him for classmate Ted Kim (Peter Wong). Hank becomes alcoholic, hits bottom, then gradually climbs back up. So, in the present, Hank is now the science teacher at the high school he attended as a student.

During the intervening years, the Ick has turned up in every corner of the globe. People brush it away, speculate about its origins, and generally don’t think about it. Then the Ick evolves.

This could work either played straight or as satire. The Ick special effects, both for rooted forms and when it possesses people, are suitably horrific and the action is propulsive.

Unfortunately, director Joseph Kahn and his co-screenwriters Samuel Laskey & Dan Koontz go to jokes that are frequently familiar and flat. They are also trying to skewer some “woke” tropes, which backfires in spectacularly unfunny fashion. (There’s a running gag, thankfully minor, that’s hard to read any way but as racist.) The early sequences, with obviously grown-up Routh in a hairstyle meant to evoke adolescence, clue us in to the silly mood that’s desired. This bit is handled with enough of a straight face to be amusing, but subsequently, the tone gets too broad.

There’s also a major plotline involving Hank’s realization that his student/Staci’s daughter Grace (Malina Weissman) may be his daughter rather than, as he’s always assumed, Staci’s child with husband Ted. This is meant to be moving and humorous; we can see the intent, but the effect is seldom felt. Gags involving other students assuming that Hank is hitting on Grace rather than trying to get to know her because he may be her father? Ick, indeed.

None of this is the fault of leading man Routh, who has a game optimism and boyishness that serve both him and the movie very well. Weissman is pleasantly naturalistic and proportionate, and Wong is on target as the commerce-minded Ted. Fahey doesn’t get much screen time, but he makes his fatherly advice memorable.

ICK isn’t actually icky as horror comedies go, but it is sometimes out in the weeds.

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