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Joseph Kahn on Toronto-Bound ‘Wholesome’ Horror ‘Ick’: ‘My Objective Is Not to Scare You. It Is to Thrill You’


Joseph Kahn talks 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. 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.”

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joseph kahn