Ick

Is Ick stupid? Yes. Is Ick bad? Intentionally so bad that it is good. This film is trying to be a terrible and goofy B-movie and parody, and I found myself laughing more than I have while watching any other comedy this year.

Ick is a great guilty pleasure for anyone who loves sci-fi horror. The Blob and The Thing fans will get a lot out of this.

An icky vine-like alien growth is a nuisance that spreads throughout the world, but in time people merely shrug their shoulders and get used to it. In small-town America the "ick" is regarded suspiciously by some including Hank, a science teacher and former football player, and Grace, one of his students. Their distrust is soon validated as the ick springs violently into a new phase of its growth.

The premise of people grown accustomed, careless, and capricious to a demon in their presence, is tantalizing. A monster is seen and ignored. However, beyond this alluring theme, there is little depth to the story, dialogue, characters, acting, and scenes. It is good for some laughs but there is not a lot of thought or creativity on display at this world premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I saw a couple of lines of another review saying "the actors looked like they were having fun making it".

Well, I guess if you take a bunch of no-name and has-been actors, that don't have anything else to do, then offer them free food, cocaine and $50 to act in an incoherent movie that don't follow its own rules and then make the whole thing for half a million bucks (seriously, it can't have cost more than that) ... then you have this piece of garbage.

Seriously, this makes movies from The Asylum look good. Really.

Just watch The Faculty, Deep Rising or/and Infestation instead. You'll have a MUCH better time that wasting it on this stupid CGI-trash.

Ick!

I wondered what I was watching at first as the beginning starts very much like a comic book or a send up of a typical American High School Movie but boy am I glad I stuck with it.

It moves so fast that if you're not careful you miss some of its funniest moments.

This is not a serious movie so if you want to be scared then this isn't for you. But if you want to be entertained then this ticks the boxes.

Just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

What initially drew me to pick up this movie was the cover. And with it being a movie that I had neither seen before, nor actually ever heard about, of course I had to check out what director Joseph Kahn had to offer.

The movie's synopsis sounded interesting enough, but I have to admit that the movie itself sort of fell short of entertaining me. I just found it to make zero sense with the 'Ick' stuff that was spreading around in the town. And the characters in the movie had about as much depth, layers and personalities as wet paint. So it was a bit of a struggle to sit through this movie. So I can't claim that writers Joseph Kahn, Dan Koontz and Samuel Laskey put together a particularly great script that catered to my preference in entertainment.

Of the entire cast ensemble in the movie, I was only familiar with Brandon Routh, Mena Suvari and Jeff Fahey. Despite the fact that the movie didn't have much of any noteworthy script, the acting performances were actually fair.

The special effects in the movie were adequate, but could only do so much to make up for the shortcoming of an inadequate script.

If you enjoy horror movies, then "Ick" is hardly a movie that I would recommend.

My rating of director Joseph Kahn's 2024 movie "Ick" lands on a four out of ten stars.