Ick is a new horror comedy from Joseph Kahn, the director behind films like Torque and Bodied. Also stylized as ICK, the movie imagines a world where a vine-like growth of extraterrestrial origin has spread across the Earth, to the surprising lack of concern of the planet’s population. Unfortunately for them, the Ick “wakes up” only to begin unleashing mayhem on the planet.

Brandon Routh stars in the movie, and ScreenRant’s Ick review dubbed the actor “perfectly cast” as Hank, the high school football star turned science teacher at the heart of the story. It’s an exciting turn for Routh, who is otherwise best known for starring in 2006’s Superman Returns as Superman himself and featuring heavily in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as a particularly memorable evil ex-boyfriend named Todd. Routh also played Ray Palmer in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and carried that role into a few appearances on the CW’s The Flash.

ScreenRant’s Grant Hermanns interviewed Joseph Kahn and Brandon Routh about their work on Ick. Kahn explained some of the influences behind the tone of the movie, and he and Routh reflected on the biggest decisions for the character of Hank. Plus, Routh, a former Superman, weighed in on certain criticisms James Gunn’s movie has faced.

Ick Is An Amblin-Inspired “Starter Horror” Movie

“I Started Missing The Type Of Movie That I Watched As A Kid”

As much as Ick harkens back to the pop-punk heyday of the early 2000s (the movie’s trailer boasts a “Featuring Music By” card that includes Paramore, Good Charlotte, and Creed), it was also borne of a love of classic Steven Spielberg films. Joseph Kahn revealed that he was inspired to make Ick in part by seeing his own children start to go through high school themselves. “I’m reliving high school again, but from a totally different perspective,” he said, adding, “and, on a certain level, I started missing the type of movie that I watched as a kid.”

“Those types of movies where things invaded–monster movies. Where are the monster movies?” he continued, ruling out modern Godzilla and King Kong films as “basically superhero movies” (“They’re just big superheroes that punch each other, right?”) Instead, Kahn was after “that sort of wonderful starter horror where you can watch a movie without being scarred. I missed that, so I wanted to make that.”

Ick isn’t Kahn’s first run through the halls of a high school, as his 2011 movie Detention featured plenty of students screaming at the top of their lungs. And, the director revealed, there may be a connection between the two. “If you look very closely,” the director said, “the Ick is a plant-like alien creature, possibly. And at the end of Detention, there’s a plant-like alien creature destroying the world.”

How Brandon Routh “Changed The Entire Tenor Of The Movie”

Routh & Kahn Explain Their Approach To Hank

Brandon Routh’s Hank was a star football player who, after a career-ending injury, ended up becoming a science teacher. That backstory isn’t just hinted at in Ick, but shown, which offered Routh a chance to live out multiple eras of his character’s life. “It is a unique experience to live … a lot of those big experiences that affected Hank’s life, instead of having to internalize it.”

Routh said that although he hadn’t considered at the time what impact those scenes had on his performance, he believed it lent him a greater ability “to be authentic and to pull from that instead of making up stories or attachments.” “I had some kind of a link to it,” he said, “so it’s easier on the imagination. And it was neat to be able to show that much of a character’s journey in such a short time.”

And Routh explained how that character’s journey helped him become the hero the characters in Ick needed. “One of the things that propels him forward,” he said, “is that hero quality of him being the quarterback, being the leader of the team, [and] winning the game at all odds.” Routh also said that that quality reminds Hank that “‘Maybe I’m not as incapacitated as I thought I was. I just needed something to live for.’”

Hank is much more than a faded football star in Ick, however, revealed Kahn–or, at least, he is thanks to Routh’s performance. “There’s a scene where Brandon is back in high school,” Kahn explained, “and they’re dancing, and then Ted Kim is by himself, and [Brandon] says, ‘Why don’t you go dance with Ted Kim?’ In the script, it’s kind of bullying; he’s just sort of doing it, and he’s kind of a d**k because that’s the arc. But Brandon does it like he feels really sorry for him. He does it out of the goodness of his heart.”

Joseph Kahn Kept The Ick’s Origins Vague On Purpose

“People … Want All [Their] Monsters Explained”

The Ick is a mysterious substance that raises a number of questions–questions Kahn deliberately wanted to keep unanswered. “We always had an idea that it would be vague,” the director said of the organism’s origins. “That was the intent of it, because, frankly, people live in a world where they want all [their] monsters explained.”

“But let’s be realistic about monsters today,” Kahn said. “Back in the day, people used to unify around these monsters. Frankenstein would come in, the town would get together, and they put Frankenstein in the windmill, and then burn it down. But if a monster appears today, it’s no longer a unification thing. People now split off into the little social media things, and everyone argues about it. People forget about and move on to the next monster, and they just live next to it. That’s kind of the big allegory here.”

“But on top of it,” he continued, “think about how we even talk about the monster. People can’t even agree on the monster.” The director considers Ick comparable to at least one world event in modern memory. “This was written before COVID, so it was predictive of COVID, by the way. But when COVID happened, people were going, ‘It’s made in a lab. No, it was made in a wet market. No, the Ukrainians did it.’ People start arguing about what COVID is. ‘Does it actually work? Do you need vaccines?’”

Brandon Routh Weighs In On Superman Reboot Criticism

“You Can’t Please Everybody All The Time”

James Gunn’s flagship DC Universe entry, Superman, has largely received positive reviews from critics and general moviegoers alike. But certain aspects of the movie have rubbed some viewers the wrong way including, somewhat paradoxically, a scene in which Superman saves the life of a squirrel. Routh gave his perspective on the matter when asked for his feelings about the criticisms. “There are a lot of voices,” he said. “There are a lot of different versions of Superman that people like to see, and you can’t please everybody all the time. I know that.”

“As an actor,” Routh continued, “you have charge over a certain amount of things. First of all, he played the moment as truthfully as Superman and [as] heroically as he could … in the context of what he was supposed to do: the performance that was Superman. It’s hard to take yourself out of that, even knowing that you did a good job.” “But, at the end of the day,” the actor shared, “anybody could pick anything out of a movie.”

“For me, it’s the energy of the story [and] the energy that I felt experiencing it … that I received from the way Superman was looking at the world, and how he spoke to people, and the kindness and gentleness,” Routh said. “Yes, maybe he wasn’t as powerful, and he was more affected by Kryptonite than other times. That’s the story.”

Routh closed with some advice for moviegoers: “As a viewer, you just have to take [an approach of], ‘This is the story I’m experiencing. This is this version of Superman.’ There are other versions of Superman; they still exist. We’re still here. We’re watching. This is the one highlighted right now, and it’s wonderful, and that is a celebration too.”