“I am reliving high school again”: Joseph Kahn reveals what inspired him to make Ick starring Brandon Routh

Brandon Routh returns as the star of Joseph Kahn’s new film, Ick, a sci-fi horror comedy film. It feels like a nostalgic kick for anyone who grew up in the 1990s or the early 2000s. It’s part high school drama and part zombie horror with loads of humor.

The trailer, released in June, showed Brandon Routh as a former football star who starts working as a high school teacher. At the end, it reveals the names of a bunch of artists whose music will feature in the movie. The list includes Blink-182, Paramore, Creed, Hoobstank, and more. Even if someone hated any of them, they will have fond memories of that.

That's why, as a viewer, watching Ick might feel like you’re reliving your high-school years again. As it turns out, writer-director Joseph Kahn made the film with a similar intention. In a recent interview with ScreenRant, he revealed what inspired him to make the film with a former Gen-Xer, Brandon Routh.

“I’m reliving high school again, but from a totally different perspective, and, on a certain level, I started missing the type of movie that I watched as a kid,” Kahn said.

Joseph Kahn speaks about collaborating with Brandon Routh and his creative input

Joseph Kahn's upcoming film follows a group of high-schoolers trying to survive an alien threat of vine growth across the planet. However, it's not the first time he has worked on a high-school drama. His 2011 film, Detention, is a black comedic slasher flick about a bunch of teenagers trying to solve a murder mystery after one of their friends gets murdered.

It's not just him. Even Brandon Routh starred in Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, about a 23-year-old musician trying to impress a girl by defeating all of her ex-boyfriends. It wasn't a high-school drama, but it had the kind of emotional beats that we often see in teenage dramas. That experience might have come in handy for Routh, who reportedly made his character appear less mean and more sympathetic.

As established before, Routh plays Hank, a faded sports legend who returns to the high school for a dull teaching job. Kahn's script originally decided to present him as a bully who is still resentful about the past. However, Routh made him rethink Hank's arc.

During the Screenrant interview, Kahn detailed a scene where Hank condescendingly speaks with Ted Kim (likely an old classmate). However, while filming it, Brandon Routh made it seem like Hank feels bad for the poor guy.

“Suddenly, it’s not, ‘Hank is a d**k. [It’s] ‘Hank is a good guy with a bad draw on life.’ And that changed the entire tenor of the movie. If he didn’t play it that one way, it would have been a completely different movie. And that’s the genius of Brandon Routh," Kahn said.

As a director, Joseph Kahn wanted to bring back the charm of classic monster movies

During the conversation, Joseph Kahn (who also co-wrote the script) spoke about his inspiration behind his monster movie. He revealed that he deliberately didn't explain the alien vine's origins. Apart from that, he had a fascinating take on how this "monster" has changed over the years in pop culture, besides how we react to it. He said,

“Let’s be realistic about monsters today. Back in the day, people used to unify around these monsters. Frankenstein would come in, the town would get together, and they would 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 it and move on to the next monster, and they just live next to it. That's kind of the big allegory here.”

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Ick is scheduled to release in theaters on July 27, 2025.

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