The Brandon Routh vehicle Ick features a secret nod to Josh Hutcherson’s underrated 2012 slasher comedy Detention, a movie that more viewers need to seek out. A nostalgic throwback to both early ‘00s teen comedies and classic ‘50s monster movies like The Blob, Ick is the latest ambitious genre blender from director Joseph Kahn.
Best known for shooting some of the most iconic music videos of the ‘00s, Kahn is also the director of cult movies like 2003’s Torque, 2012’s Detention, and 2017’s Bodied. While Ick is a fun horror comedy in its own right, Kahn fans might be surprised to learn Ick has a direct link to the director’s earlier horror comedy.
In Grant Hermanns’ interview with Joseph Kahn for ScreenRant, Ick’s director admitted that the gruesome creature feature has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Detention. The reference links the ending of Detention to the plot of Ick, and it doesn’t bode well for the earlier movie’s heroes. Per Kahn:
“As to the link to Detention, if you look very closely, the Ick is a plant-like alien creature, possibly. And in the ending of Detention, there’s a plant-like alien creature destroying the world. And then if you look closely at one sH๏τ in the movie, there’s a newspaper that a homeless guy that’s been Icked out is holding, and it says “The Town Of Grizzly Lake Has Been Destroyed.” So it’s in there.”
Ick Has A Secret Detention Connection
If You Haven’t Seen It, You Should Check It Out
This hysterically glib gag effectively confirms that most of Detention’s heroes are likely ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, which would be a pretty tragic twist in most fictional universes. However, viewers who have seen Detention already will know that Kahn’s twisty, meta-horror-comedy isn’t overly concerned with sentimentality.
Ick will have a limited theatrical release starting July 24.
An underrated, hyperactive blend of sci-fi, teen comedy, horror, romance, and satire, Detention has a similar tone to Kahn’s larger-than-life Ick. Both movies boast plentiful gore and many horror tropes, but also a broad sense of humor that verges on outright parody at times.
Essentially a blend of the Scream movies and their equally famous parodies, the Scary Movie series, Detention throws endless teen movie archetypes into a blender and serves up the resulting mess with a self-aware grin. There’s the bad buy antihero, the disaffected heroine, a masked murderer culling students, a time travel subplot, a hulking jock, and even a mother/daughter body swap.
Detention is available to view on AppleTV and Prime Video.
If it sounds like Detention is trying to do too much, that’s because it is. Kahn’s movie is shamelessly, hopelessly overstuffed, leaving more hidden gems for viewers to discover upon each re-watch. As such, while Ick is also worth seeking out, viewers shouldn’t miss out on the plentiful fun that the underrated Detention offered 13 years earlier.
