Joseph Kahn’s new filmIckhad its midnight premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, September 7, opening to a crowd of enthusiastic moviegoers. Brandon Routh (Superman Returns,DC’s Legends of Tomorrow) stars as Hank, a high school science teacher whose football aspirations are ripped away following an ick-induced injury on the field. While most of the population appears unbothered by the disturbing anomaly consuming their town, Hank, and his student, Grace (Malina Weissman), worry about the ick’s evolution.
The two find themselves unexpectedly bonding when the creatures rise up and pose the threat they always feared. While it has a few jump scares,Ick’scomedic elementis its strongest, poking fun at tropes and flipping mass panic on its head. Kahn shares that he wanted to create something for viewers who watch movies in their classic form by walking into a theater with no expectations. In addition to Routh, Malina Weissman, Mena Suvari, Mariann Gavelo, Harrison Cone, Taia Sophia, and Jack Seavor McDonald make up the main cast.
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Screen Rantinterviewed Kahn, Routh, Weissman, and Suvari about what their own reactions would be to the scientific anomaly, the meaning behind Hank’s playlist, and what makesIckstand out from otherfilms in the genre.
Routh Believes Music Kept Hank Alive In Ick
“That was his connection to that time, to his youth, and to Staci. It means a great deal to him.”
Screen Rant: Joseph, at the premiere you said you were watching the movie for the first time. What did it feel like to experience that with a live audience?
Joseph Kahn: I had seen versions of it. I just combined it together. In terms of the actual result of it, in terms of when it becomes a movie, is when you actually watch it with an audience. I thought we had an amazing reaction. I had actually test screened it before, and this version was kind of crazy because every little beat there’s a laugh.
I did calibrate the movie to be rewatched. It’s one of those rewatch movies. So some of those laughs eat over different lines of dialouge and stuff like that. I knew it was going to happen. The audience laughs, but then another line starts coming up really fast, and then they stop, and they laugh again. It’s really meant, ultimately, for rewatches, but I was super thrilled with the reaction.
Everyone in this film has a little bit of a different mindset when it comes to the ick. Would you each accept the ick as a part of life, or would you be trying to get to the root of it?
Malina Weissman: I would definitely accept it. I know Grace doesn’t, but I would probably just accept it.
Mena Suvari: I think in real life, I would not be Staci. [Laughs] I’d be reacting very differently. I would hope at least that I would. I wouldn’t be as complacent.
Brandon Routh: I’d be similar to Hank. You obviously are aware of it, and so you do have to deal with it in a way, but it doesn’t mean, just because you’re dealing with it, that you’re not working to solve the problem and allowing it to continue.
Brandon, I loved Hank’s playlist. Did you listen to it when you were trying to get into character, and what song do you feel captures his energy the best?
Brandon Routh: Higher by Creed, the whole thing in the car is the pinnacle of Hank’s experience to me because, if you think about it, music’s probably the only thing that kept him alive all this time. That was his connection to that time, to his youth, and to Staci. It means a great deal to him, and it literally is the soundtrack of his life. I think that song is just an epic song, period. I’ve been a fan of it since it came out. So we have this big, epic, pivotal character moment about it.
Speaking of Hank and Staci, Mena, their relationship is one of the catalysts of the film. What was it like playing a teenage version of yourself?
Mena Suvari: Very wild. Very cool. Something that I never thought I’d ever get to experience. I was grateful that I got to, and especially through someone like Joseph Kahn.
Joseph Kahn: Getting them to be teenagers again, I had a choice there. The normal way you would probably do it is you just cast younger actors, but everyone always knows on a certain level there’s a certain system of disbelief, especially when they get to the 18-year-old stage. Now we have the technology to actually just de-age them into the age bracket.
I know people always fight stuff like this, but it’s the right tool because I want the actors to play it. I don’t want other actors. I want the actual real people to be their 18-year-old self. And if we’ve got the technology to do it, let’s do it. It’s not taking away from humanity, it’s actually letting the two actors be the characters.
Kahn Thinks Audience Members Want A Movie Like Ick (They Just Don’t Know It)
“If you have an open mind and an open heart, I think there’s a good reward in here for you.”
Malina, what do you admire most about Grace? Was there anything that really stood out about her from other characters you’ve played?
Malina Weissman: I admire her a lot. I think she’s a super smart, strong girl that a lot of younger girls can look up to. I think she has a lot of drive, but at the same time is super cool, calm, does what she wants, wants what she wants, and she’s super strong.
I think she’s going through what a normal teenage girl is going through as well. She hates her parents. She is trying to figure out high school. She’s hating her boyfriend. She has her friends, and I think that it’s a cool character for young girls to watch and look up to and relate to. I love her. She’s a really cool person.
WithIckbeing a satire, did you write this for moviegoers who are bored with classic film tropes, or for people who love them, but enjoy poking fun at the concepts?
Joseph Kahn: I’ll tell you who I wrote it for. I wrote it for people that really want to watch movies in the classic form. Right now, I feel like we’re so structured in terms of how we watch movies. It’s like an exchange. I’m going to give you money and some time and you better give me exactly what I order. I want my comic book movie and it better have a certain number of laughs. If I get my horror film, it’s got to have a certain number of scares. It better be jump scares and have this tone, and it also must be about serial killers.
It’s like ordering a hamburger now where you get exactly what you want. But I remember in the eighties when I was a kid, I would walk into these movies, like, Raiders of the Lost Ark, who knew what that genre was at that point? Jaws, a shark movie? What was that all about? Or when you saw Ghostbusters, a movie about people catching ghosts, and it’s funny, and it’s got this pop song in it, those experiences were magical because you were open to new ideas.
When you walked into that dark movie theater, there was no expectation of exactly what you want. You were actually exploring mysteries. I made this movie for people that are open to adventure, basically. If you’re going to walk into this movie, and you want a very specific movie in a very specific genre with a very specific structure, and it’s not what you get, you’re going to be very disappointed.
But if you have an open mind and an open heart, I think there’s a good reward in here for you. And I believe in the audience, by the way. I think the audience wants to do this. The audience wants a movie like this, they just don’t know it yet because they’ve only been taught to look at it from this very marketed, structured, social media enclaves of little tribes. And when I make movies, I try to break that, and this is no exception.
What was it like filming without the ick versus watching it onscreen?
Brandon Routh: My favorite shot is when I’m on the ground and it’s rising up behind me and growing. It’s just such a sweet shot. And when it crystallizes and hardens, sometimes it’s pretty amazing, and just the rapid pace that it moves. It’s pretty gruesome, but so interesting.
Malina Weissman: It was fun. We did a running scene. We were running on the field, we were running to the towers, and on the day we were just running around jumping over air. So it was really fun to see the actual ick on the floor and see that come to life.
Joseph Kahn: As a filmmaker it’s interesting, because at that point, I’m letting the actors actually define the ick by how they move on the field. It’s basically like it’s four actors running on a field, and it’s completely empty. It’s a normal field. And I told them, “Jump around. Imagine where the ick is,” and they did it. That allowed me and my VFX artist to actually start animating the ick on every one of their jumps and things like that.
Brandon Routh: I really like how, because it’s a horror movie, there’s always got to be some scary stuff, but when the ick is going to take somebody, a lot of the times, as we see what’s going to happen, we know something gross is going to happen, but you’re pushing in, so you’re only getting half of it. You’re not getting the full grossness, you’re only getting a softer amount of grossness. I like that because it makes it more of an adventure movie, or that movie that’s not going to be too gruesome that you don’t want to watch it.
Joseph Kahn: I’m a big fan of horror films, but lately everything kind of skews towards one type of horror film. It’s the film that you’re really interested in how people die. You buy a ticket, and you’re really interested in “How do these people die?” I wanted to make a horror film where you’re more interested in how do these characters live? What do they have to live? Why do they need to live? Those are the questions I wanted to ask through horror—not how they die.
About Joseph Kahn’s Ick
“Joseph Kahn returns to Midnight Madness with a berserkly sardonic creature feature that riffs on classic science-fiction horror films, but with a crucial subversion.”
In the small American town of Eastbrook, nearly two decades after a viscous vine-like growth — colloquially referred to as “the Ick” — began encroaching on every nook and cranny, a nonplussed populus have found their lives seemingly unaffected by the creeping anomaly.
The exceptions to this oblivious conformity are Hank Wallace (Brandon Routh), a former high-school football prospect turned hapless science teacher, and his perceptive student Grace (Malina Weissman), who both regard the Ick with a suspicious scrutiny that is soon violently validated. Bursts of bloody bedlam and blasé attitudes ensue, cannily satirizing how a society can grow accustomed to living in a perpetual state of emergency.
Ickpremiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7.
Ick
Ick follows Hank, a high school science teacher, as he navigates personal revelations, including potentially having a teenage daughter, while contending with an alien anomaly invading his small town. The film explores Hank’s emotional journey intertwined with extraordinary events disrupting his life.
