Joseph Kahn on Toronto-Bound ‘Wholesome’ Horror ‘Ick’

Joseph Kahn’s sci-fi/horror satire “Ick” has its world premiere in Toronto Intl. Film Festival’s Midnight Madness slot on Saturday. He previously directed “Bodied,” which premiered at the festival in 2017, and won the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness. Kahn talks to Variety about his love for creature features, taking comedy-horrors seriously, and his respect for Steven Spielberg’s scary movies.

Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky summarizes the plot as follows: “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, a former high-school football prospect turned hapless science teacher, and his perceptive student Grace, 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.”

Kuplowsky adds: “Kahn enlivens the pointed irony of this pulp horror scenario with his signature breakneck abandon and pop aesthetics. Dizzying, grotesque, and hysterical in both definitions of the word, ‘Ick’ points a cultural mirror towards a contemporary ethos that has been fomenting since the turn of this century, a premise crystalized in the film’s deployment of millennial needle drops that are as nostalgic as they are infectious.”
 
Kahn is a fan of Spielberg monster movies like “Jaws” and “Jurassic Park,” he tells Variety. “The interesting thing is I have heard this generic statement for as long as I’ve been in Hollywood, which is that horror-comedies don’t work, they don’t sell. [I am told] ‘People don’t know whether they’re funny or they’re scary.’ But that’s only if you look at it from the perspective of the horror being funny.
 
“The horror in our film is not funny. It’s taken very seriously. And the thing I would say about Spielberg is that when he does horror, when you watch ‘Jaws,’ it’s actually a very funny movie. Richard Dreyfuss is really funny in that movie and there are a lot of funny sight gags and interpersonal relationships.
 
“‘Jurassic Park,’ as scary as that movie is, it’s actually a hilarious movie. Jeff Goldblum is funny. Everything he says is really funny. The interactions between the kids and the main characters are really funny.
 
“There is an element of humor that is lacking in horror, because people want you to stay scared. But my objective here is not to scare you. My objective is to thrill you. And I love how Spielberg does that, and I love how that was really kind of the attitude back in the 80s … Ultimately you wanted to get your money’s worth. You wanted to be scared, you wanted to cry, you wanted to laugh … give it all.
 
“And when I talk about the creature feature, ‘Gremlins’ is a great example. A scary movie for kids, but a lot of comedy in there. And that’s the sort of – for the lack of a better word – wholesome human experience that I love when I watch movies, and I don’t feel like I get a lot of that. That’s why I made this movie, because I wanted to have that experience again.”
 
In the past, monster movies were often linked to societal fears – whether that be communism or nuclear annihilation – so are there any fears that “Ick” feeds off?
 
“I find that when people analyze and watch movies, they take out of it what they want, and it’s all valid. I don’t necessarily build a system in a movie to tell you what to think. I build a series of questions, and then you take what you want out of them.
 
“So, when it comes to fear in this movie, I think one of the biggest differences between this and the creature features of the past is that a lot of the creature features of the past had very specific questions, and it was always: What if the fear came? What happens if the monster attacked? What happens if the nuclear bomb went off? That would be ‘Godzilla.’ What if, in a world of modern technology at the time, the past catches up with you, and the ancient things like storms and earthquakes still topple buildings – ‘King Kong,’ right?
 
“What happens in a society where you think you’re safe in a community, and you close all your doors, and you shut all your windows, but still an exotic, unknown human being can come in and get you. It’s ‘Dracula.’
 
“So, there’s these questions that people always had, like, what if the monster comes inside? What if the monster gets you, right?
 
“I think the most interesting thing about the modern society is that that question actually has been answered. We’ve seen 9/11, we’ve seen COVID, we’ve seen various political situations, and they’ve come to fruition. Our worst nightmares have come in. And you know what ends up happening with human beings when we actually see it? In the most odd way, we just live next to it. We forget about it. You know, two years after 9/11 like we’re all going back to life as usual. COVID – at a certain point, we got tired of wearing the mask and got tired of staying inside. It wasn’t that they solved COVID. It was that people got tired and we just went back out into society, and just whatever would come, would come.
 
“It doesn’t mean I’m making a judgment call on any of this stuff, because at a certain point, there’s an element of human survival that is always there. We must survive, we must carry on. It’s that weird conflict between human survival and human ignorance. Where’s the line?
 
“So, one of the biggest comedic, satiric aspects of ‘Ick’ is that they live with the Ick. It’s everywhere around them, and on a certain level, if you look at that from the outside, you’re like, ‘That is ridiculous.’ But is it really or is it the most truthful thing about the movie?”
 
The Midnight Madness section’s programmer Peter Kuplowsky is known as someone who sets the bar high. What’s he looking for?
 
“I think, knowing Peter Kuplowsky, he’s looking for provocative work,” Kahn says. “Stuff that has energy, frankly. He’s very unpretentious on a certain level, which I love about him, and he watches a ton of movies. So, essentially, he is the great firewall of TIFF Midnight Madness. So you got to provoke a guy who has seen every frickin’ weird movie in the world. You got to get past that taste level.”
 
So how did “Ick” get the nod? “I think that we are actually counterprogramming to not only Midnight Madness but TIFF itself in that this movie was made independently but I actually think it has a gloriously Hollywood feel about it, like in a very old school way. I know a lot of people have attempted to make throwback movies that feel like the 80s and 90s, but I think we have genuinely done it in a new way. Everything from soundtrack to score, to the plot, and the creature feature of it all, but done with a new spin on it and a new attitude. But the ultimate twist of the whole thing is it is really a PG-13 movie – I call it PG-13+. It’s not really an R-rated movie because there is no cursing, there’s no sex, I think the gore is more fantasy versions – it still has a wholesomeness about it that appeals to the family. It is genuinely a movie you could watch with your teenager.”
 
Kahn gathered a top-notch cast led by Brandon Routh, whose credits include “Superman Returns” and Netflix’s “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off,” Mena Suvari, who was in “American Pie” and “American Beauty,” and Malina Weissman, who was in Netflix’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and “Supergirl.” This was a statement of intent, on the director’s part, to underscore that he was taking the horror-comedy genre seriously.
 
“One of the things that is very specific about horror comedies is the tone of the acting, the intent of the acting,” he says.
 
Weissman was one of the first of the lead actors to be cast. “Her performance stood out like crazy because she had that ability to be completely serious, but the lines were still funny,” Kahn says.
 
“Some people can say serious lines in a serious way, and there’s no humor to it, but she had a way of presenting her character in a way that was completely believable and completely authentic, and yet the humor still came through. And that’s a very, very hard line to walk. When I saw her audition, I was like, that is the prototype for the tone of the movie.
 
“Brandon Routh is very skilled at that too. He’s very deadpan when he needs to be, but he also has an emotional undercurrent that can just pop up.”

The movie is written by Kahn, Sam Laskey and Dan Koontz.
 
AGC Intl., the sales arm of Stuart Ford’s indie content studio AGC Studios, will handle international sales at Toronto on “Ick.” CAA Media Finance and Peter Trinh, a producer on the movie, are spearheading North American sales at Toronto.

The film’s producers also include Steven Schneider (“Paranormal Activity,” “Insidious,” “Late Night With the Devil”). It was co-financed by a group of investors in conjunction with Interstellar Entertainment and Image Nation Abu Dhabi.