Body horror is on a hot streak lately, but leave it to Detention director Joseph Kahn to forge his own path. Ick, the filmmaker’s latest, brings the carnage and comedy in spades with an energetic pop punk ode to retro creature features.

Fathom Entertainment brings Ick to select theatres in New York and Los Angeles for a one-week theatrical run starting Thursday, July 24, and expands to theaters nationwide July 27-29.

Ick stars Brandon Routh as Hank, a former high school football star turned science teacher dealing with life’s disappointments when the plant-based “Ick” that’s long plagued the town suddenly becomes far more aggressive and rampant. It’s the type of fast-spreading alien threat that calls to mind films like The Blob, but with a contemporary spirit and sense of humor, especially when it comes to skewering the generational divide. 

That retro monster movie meets modern comedy presents a ton of pop punk fun and provides an interesting shift in the body horror subgenre’s fascination with aging.

Kahn, speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, explains, “There’s a piece of me that just loves the movies from the ’40s, with the clever scripts and the speed of the dialogue and things like that. It’s kind of a lost art form, and it’s just a tone I just love making. The funny thing is, when it comes to horror movies, there’s a lot of body horror these days, and Ick is a body horror, right? But the funny thing is, a lot of body horror is about aging. But in Ick, aging actually has nothing to do with body horror!”

“That’s the comedy. The body horror comes from another place,” Kahn continues. “We treat the aging part of it with a sense of humor and satire.”

Star Brandon Routh, who previously showcased his comedic chops in projects like Scott Pilgrim and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” gets to really play up the comedy here as Hank. Exploring the humor was a significant part of Ick‘s appeal for the actor, and it also had him reflecting on previous roles.

“It’s very much on the page,” Routh said of Ick‘s comedy. “That’s one of the reasons why I really was attracted to the movie, because humor is always what I’m looking to do more of in every project that I can. Speaking with Joseph, he really champions that. The comedy that was in there was a part of it, and how important it was to the tone of the movie. I played a character somewhat like this in Dylan Dog, but I was too young to understand the edginess. It was fine, but if I were doing Dylan now, it’d be even better.

“But I was able to revisit that a little bit, though they’re very different characters. But the kind of anti-hero, the begrudging, sarcastic guy, grumbling under his breath. I found a grounded place in that for me as I got older and really settled into him. It was fun to live in that space and do humor, adding some little bits here and there.”

Kahn chimes in, “You actually added a really great ad lib. At the end, when they throw the mail at you, and you miss it. He goes, ‘I thought you were a football player,’ and Hank goes, ‘Quarterback.’ That’s an improv from Brandon.”

If it’s not already clear, Hank is the opposite of Steve McQueen cool when it comes to horror movie heroes. Despite life’s constant setbacks and his hapless personality, Hank is an unflappably nice guy.

“I think music probably is one of the saving graces,” Routh says of Hank’s pure heart. “I mean literally for him. And his connection to the past. The past is good and bad; it’s what we make of it, and how we view that story, which leads us into the future. Hank’s just been living in the past, and the possibility of Grace (Malina Weissman) being a family, of having some kind of link outside of himself, rekindles his heart, and the hope that he thought of the greatness of when he was in high school was not just about him. It’s about connecting to people, and he re-engages with that. It allows him to have that heroic bit of him still reignited, but in a wiser, more mature way.”

While the stacked soundtrack is sure to have Millennials bopping along, there was really only one key track that was vital to Kahn’s film. It also highlights his unique approach to the film.

Kahn explains, “The only must-have was Creed, because there’s literally a plot point that revolves around this. It wasn’t just an experiment of throwing in pop punk tracks. It’s a story about aging. It’s a story about Millennials getting old because a lot of these songs are 20 years old. You know what 20 years is. That’s a generation.”

The filmmaker continues, “There are two versions of this movie: there’s a version that Millennials watch, and there’s a version that Gen Z watches. I think the younger people will see it as a straight horror film with comedy in it. I think older people will see it as a comedy with some horror elements. One of the horror elements is that you’re aging, you know. It’s that you listen to all this music, and he’s stuck in time. He’s a fish out of water, and one of the things that you do when you get older is you recognize the things that you want out of life may not have worked out exactly as you did when you were younger. That’s just part of growing up. You don’t get to be Tom Brady. You didn’t become a millionaire. You didn’t get everything you wanted. You didn’t marry the hottest girl in school and retain her, and stuff like that.”

“But you know what you do,” the director continues. “You find something new to love, and it could be a child, it could be a person. It could be a gift. With Hank’s world, with falling in with his baby daughter. The entire question of whether it’s his daughter or not doesn’t really matter now. He’s got something to give, something to love, something to get passed down. Millennials accept that.

“This movie is both depressing, but then also uplifting because it makes you feel old… but it also makes you feel good.”