Brandon Routh has had a rough career since he was Superman in ‘Superman Returns’. I do genuinely enjoy him, I think he’s got the same sweetness in him that got him the role of Superman, the same trustworthiness that Christopher Reeves had when he played the role. Routh is fun and energetic, he’s earnest and light hearted. So to see his talents wasted in the expertly mismanaged horror film ‘Ick’ is depressing.

Where to even begin? I could lay into the messiness of the plot, how it makes no sense that a dumb jock drunk would somehow pivot to become a science teacher, and how there was no work done to make that change make sense. I could point out how any of the Gen Z students in the movie speak like they were written by the cringiest millennial in existence. I could point out that it felt like the longest movie I saw at TIFF even though it clocks in at a breezy eighty seven minutes. I could explain how the rules of the monster change without explanation at the drop of a hat, how it doesn’t make sense at any point. But I don’t want to give you the cursed knowledge of any of that.

So let’s talk about tone. It’s something that’s been at front of mind this weekend as a lot of movies I’ve seen have big tonal shifts throughout. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. In ‘Ick’ the shifts create such whiplast it felt like I was in a bumper car on the autobahn. One moment there will be a slimy monsterous limb coming to kill someone, Routh will make a dumb blue joke that (usually) no one in the audience will laught at. And within less than a second he will be having a heartfelt conversation with his daughter. I don’t think I can convey how egregious it is. The tone is an issue from the beginning. The first part of the movie is the end of Routh’s character’s high school career and it is played at break neck speed. Perhaps Kahn thought if he got through the film fast no one would walk out during it. I can confirm that that plan did not work.

Outside of all of this the effects are among the ugliest I’ve seen put to screen. I often complain about CGI goop on here, particularly about the MCU’s use of it. I may need to write Kevin Feige a formal apology because the effects in this movie looked like they had been hurriedly slapped on thirty minutes before the movie. That’s probably because when Joseph Kahn came out to introduce the movie, he admitted that the effects had been hurriedly slapped on thirty minutes before the movie. It was an absolutely insane thing to cop to.

The best part of the movie is the soundtrack. It’s the only thing that works in something that’s moving as fast as this is. It’s a back drop of emo songs from when I was in high school, so I’m certainly biased. But if there is something that is ALMOST working with the frenetic energy of the movie it’s pop punk needle drops every 2 minutes.

Underneath all of this is a desperate plea to be found edgy. The crass jokes, the murderous goop, the dismissal of needing to have anything close to something anyone would consider pacing. But I was under the impression that we as a society had done an alright job of dismissing edge-lords. Not because we need to clutch our pearls whenever they do or say something purely for attention, not because we are so offended by their antics that we deem them unimportant.

It’s because they’re fucking annoying. And if there is one thing this movie is good at, it’s being fucking annoying.

1/5