Mena Suvari Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Ick’ (2025), starring Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Harrison Cone, Jeff Fahey and Mena Suvari

July 29, 2025

by Carla Hay

Taia Sophia, Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman and Zeke Jones in “Ick” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Entertainment)

“Ick” (2025)

Directed by Joseph Kahn

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2024 (with brief scenes taking place from 2006 through the 2010s), in the fictional city of Eastbroke, Kansas, the horror comedy film “Ick” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A science teacher at a high school and some of his students (one of whom might be his daughter) get caught up in fighting off a deadly mass of tentacles known as the Ick.

Culture Audience: “Ick” will appeal primarily to people who fans of “creature feature” horror movies and don’t mind if the story is poorly written with characters who have two-dimensional personalities.

Malina Weissman in “Ick” (Photo courtesy of Fathom Entertainment)

“Ick” is an incoherent and uneven mess of a horror movie. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a family drama and a gross-out comedy, in addition to being about a mass of tentacles that go on a murderous rampage and turn people into zombies. The editing is manic in the first third of the movie, turns sluggish in the middle of the movie, and then becomes a predictable horror story with a series of kill scenes inspired by the 1958 horror classic “The Blob.” Much of “Ick” just seems to exist to be a nostalgia soundtrack for early-to-mid 2000s pop/rock music.

Directed by Joseph Kahn, “Ick” co-written by Kahn, Dan Koontz and Samuel Laskey. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. “Ick” takes place in the fictional suburban city of Eastbrook, Kansas, mostly in 2024, with brief scenes taking place from 2006 through the 2010s.

“Ick” is told in chronological order and begins sometime in 2006, when Hank Wallace (played by Brandon Routh) is a star football player for Eastbrook High School. Hank seems to be having an ideal life at high school: He and his cheerleader girlfriend Staci (played by Mena Suvari) are very popular and have been crowned king and queen of their prom. (Routh and Suvari have de-aging visual effects in these scenes.)

Eastbrook has several seaweed-like clumps of tentacles that are in various places around the city. The locals call this mysterious mass the Ick. In the beginning of the movie, the Ick is considered an ugly, tangled blight that seems to be a non-poisonous waste substance.

It’s mentioned in the movie that there is no origin story for the Ick. It’s just another way of saying that the screenwriters were too lazy and not creative enough to come up with an origin story. The only thing that’s known about the Ick is that it keeps getting larger every year.

One day, before a football game, Staci says to Hank that she has something important to tell him. The movie never shows what she told Hank. But during the game, Hank sees Staci making out in the stands with a classmate named Ted Kim (played by Peter Wong), which causes Hank to get distracted. Just as that moment, some of the Ick reaches out from underneath the field and grabs Hank’s right ankle.

Hank falls down and breaks his right leg. He recovers from the injury but it permanently disables his right leg and he has to wear a leg brace. Things go from bad to worse for Hank: His widower father Andy Wallace (played by Jeff Fahey) dies of a heart attack. Staci and Ted become a couple. Hank is working behind the counter of a drugstore when Staci and Ted buy a home pregnancy test that he has to ring up as a sale.

Through a series of montages, the movie shows that over the next several years, Hank became a recovering alcoholic, worked as a janitor at the high school, and later became a science teacher. Hank has become a sad sack loner who has never really gotten over the breakup with Staci. Hank doesns’t seem particularly interested in the flirtations of his co-worker Sofia Díaz (played by Mariann Gavelo), a school faculty member who has a sassy personality.

In 2024, Staci and Ted are a married couple who are successful realtors. Their 18-year-old daughter Grace (played by Malina Weissman), who is a talented student and somewhat sarcastic, is in her last year at Eastbrook High School. Hank wonders if Grace (who is one of his students) could be his biological child. He confronts Staci about it, and she vehemently denies that Hank is Grace’s father. But could Staci be lying to protect her image of having the “perfect” family?

Hank’s glory days were in high school, before his right leg was broken, which is why the soundtrack music of “Ick” is filled with songs from bands that had their biggest hits in the early-to-mid 2000s. The movie’s soundtrack includes songs from the All-American Rejects (“Swing, Swing”), Good Charlotte (“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”), Blink-182 (“All the Small Things”), Chevelle (“The Red”), Plain White T’s (“Hey There Delilah”), Fountains of Wayne (“Stacy’s Mom”), Creed (“With Arms Wide Open”) and Hoobastank (“The Reason”). The 2000s nostalgia is all over the movie, including a subplot about Eastwood High School in 2024 having a 2000s-themed school dance.

Two of Hank’s other students, who become an important part of the story, look like they’re stuck in a youth culture fashion time warp. Heather (played by Taia Sophia), who is moody and wears heavy eye liner, looks like an emo girl from 2004. Griffin (played by Zeke Jones)—with his long hair, flannel shirt and ski cap—looks like he stepped out of a grunge rock video from 1994. Heather and Griffin, who are “misfits” at school, end up being romantically attracted to each other in a very dull romance.

Grace has a classmate boyfriend named Dylan (played by Harrison Cone), who has a caricature-like personality. Dylan is condescending when spouting politically correct preaching so that he can appear to be “enlightened” and “progressive” feminist. But Dylan is actually a jerk who is inclined to cheat on Grace if given the opportunity and if he thinks he won’t get caught.

There’s also a brief spoof of Alex Jones’ Infowars, with a scene featuring an Infosys social media channel and its conspiracy theorist host (played by Mike Capozzi), who claims that the Ick can improve sexual potency. In response to the growing Ick plague, several of the citizens of Eastbrook react to quarantines in the way that many politically conservative people reacted to government-mandated COVID-19 quarantines, including getting into angry rants at town hall meetings. The movie’s parodies of “woke” and neo-conservative cultures has limp jokes that sound like rejects from amateur comedians.

The rest of the movie stumbles and fumbles along with this paternity drama and some useless high school scenes until the real action starts. With no explanation, the Ick grows to alarming proportions and begins attacking the people of Eastbrook by turning them into zombies. Even though it’s the best part of the movie, it’s still not enough to make up for the flimsy plot, unimpressive acting, hollow characters, disjointed direction, and a cop-out ending that doesn’t give answers to a big unresolved part of the story.

Fathom Entertainment released “Ick” for a limited engagement in U.S. cinemas on July 25, July 27, July 28, and July 29, 2025.

Review: ‘Breakwater’ (2023), starring Dermot Mulroney, Darren Mann, Alyssa Goss, Sonja Sohn, Celia Rose Gooding and Mena Suvari

January 2, 2024

by Carla Hay

Darren Mann and Alyssa Goss in “Breakwater” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“Breakwater” (2023)

Directed by James Rowe

Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina and in Virginia, the dramatic film “Breakwater” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An ex-con tracks down the estranged daughter of a fellow prisoner as a favor but finds out that this favor is not what it appears to be.

Culture Audience: “Breakwater” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching predictable and not-very-believable crime thrillers.

Dermot Mulroney in “Breakwater” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)

“Breakwater” starts off being a mediocre thriller, but then it goes swiftly downhill in the last third of the movie, when it crams in too many far-fetched plot twists. It doesn’t help that the movie’s protagonist is dimwitted and boring. Unfortunately, the trailer for “Breakwater” reveals about 85% of what happens in the last third of the movie, including a few of the plot twists that should be surprises. Therefore, anyone who sees the trailer before watching “Breakwater” will be even more bored, because of the long and often tedious wait to get to the expected climactic showdown.

Written and directed by James Rowe, “Breakwater” had the potential to be a much better film if it hadn’t relied so much on tiresome clichés. The movie is also plagued by mediocre-to-bad performances from many of the principal cast members. The “hero” and the “villain” in the story have one-dimensional personalities. It all adds up to a frequently flat cinematic experience that becomes the most cringeworthy in the last third of the movie.

“Breakwater” centers on a gullible young man named Dovey (played by Darren Mann, giving a very stiff performance), who was sent to a Virginia prison for drug possession. (“Breakwater” was actually filmed in North Carolina.) Viewers find out later that Dovey took the blame for the crime, in order to protect the guilty woman whom he didn’t want to go to prison. It’s an example of how Dovey is overly generous and can be taken advantage of by the wrong people.

In the beginning of the movie, Dovey is spending his last day in prison before he is released. A fellow inmate named Ray Childress (played by Dermot Mulroney) has somehow gotten a slice of cake inside a cell and gives it to Dovey as a “birthday” present, because Ray says that getting out of prison is a rebirth. Ray asks Dovey for a big favor when Dovey is out of prison: Ray wants Dovey to find his estranged adult daughter Marina, who hasn’t seen or spoke to Ray in about seven years.

Ray has an idea where Marina is because he saw a woman who looks just like her in a newspaper photo published with a story about the mast of a 19th century ship being found off the coast of North Carolina. The mast is still standing upright in the ocean before it will be transported somewhere to be examined. Marina was one of the onlookers in the photo.

Ray says that if Dovey finds Marina, then Dovey cannot tell Marina that Ray is looking for her. Ray also says he just wants Dovey to tell him where Marina lives or works and if Marina is doing okay. Dovey agrees to do this favor out of the goodness of his heart and because he respects Ray, who became his friend in prison. Dovey doesn’t expect anything in return.

Even though Mena Suvari is a headliner for this movie, she has a useless cameo that lasts for less than five minutes. She portrays a bartender named Kendra, who has a thing for ex-cons and tries to seduce Dovey soon after he gets out of prison and he becomes a customer in the bar where she works. Their brief encounter ends awkwardly when Dovey doesn’t go for Kendra’s kink of having an ex-con pretend to kill her while having sex.

Before going to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where Marina is believed to be living, Dovey goes home to spend time with his fisherman father Luther (played by J.D. Evermore), whose specialty is crab fishing. Luther is happy to have Dovey working with him again on Luther’s small fishing boat. However, Dovey doesn’t stay for very long before he hops on his motorcycle to go to North Carolina to find Marina.

It should come as no surprise that Dovey finds her, except she is now going by the name Eve (played by Alyssa Goss), and she is the single mother of a daughter named Harper (played by Ezra DuVall), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Harper and Eve live with Eve’s roommate Jess (played by Celia Rose Gooding), a pop/R&B singer who gets gigs at local restaurants/bars. “Breakwater” barely shows what kind of mother Eve is until the problematic last third of the movie.

Eve, who is friendly but foul-mouthed in her personal life, seems to be financially struggling. She is juggling jobs at a bookstore and as a tour guide for Outer Banks historical locations. Dovey charms Eve when they first meet by telling her that they share a passion for ships and sea history. He also tells her that he grew up spending a lot of time in the water. Dovey and Eve’s attraction to each other goes exactly where you think it will go.

Eve decides to take Dovey to a rocky coast area so he can get a better look at the mast from the 19th century shipwrecked boat. She accidentally drops a bracelet that she says was given to her by her father. The bracelet has sunk into the water, but Dovey decides he’s going to be a gallant gentleman, so he dives in the water to retrieve the bracelet and gives it back to Eve, who is flattered by and grateful for this kind gesture. Dovey later describes the bracelet to Ray in a phone conversation, which is how Ray knows that Dovey found the right person.

Of course, since it was already revealed in the movie’s trailer, Ray has sinister reasons to find Eve. Dovey’s no-nonsense parole officer Bonnie Bell (played by Sonja Sohn) becomes involved in this mess when she finds out that Dovey has violated his parole by crossing state lines without permission. It all leads to a very hokey conclusion with ridiculous-looking action scenes and plot “reveals” that sink the movie faster than you can say “forgettable, low-quality movie.”

Vertical released “Breakwater” in U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on December 22, 2023.

Review: ‘The Accursed’ (2022), starring Sarah Grey, Meg Foster, Sarah Dumont, Alexis Knapp and Mena Suvari

May 7, 2023

by Carla Hay

Meg Foster in “The Accursed” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“The Accursed” (2022)

Directed by Kevin Lewis

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2019, in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “The Accursed” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A young woman goes to a house in a remote wooded area, after she’s hired to be a nurse caretaker for an elderly woman, who has a secret: She’s possessed by a demon.

Culture Audience: “The Accursed” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching cliché-ridden horror movies that offer very little suspense or terror.

Sarah Dumont, Mena Suvari and Sarah Grey in “The Accursed” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“The Accursed” is full of half-baked ideas that are terribly mishandled. The acting is subpar. There’s hardly anything scary about this low-quality horror flick, which has a fixation on showing disgusting things coming out of elderly women’s mouths.

Directed by Kevin Lewis and written by Rob Kennedy, “The Accursed” is nothing but a lazy checklist of the most over-used low-budget horror stereotypes: Are there women (usually young, usually pretty) in peril? Check. Are they stuck in a remote place (usually a house in the woods) and can’t figure out a way to leave? Will the victims be the targets of an evil ghost, demon or serial killer? Check.

“The Accursed” takes place in 2019, in an unnamed U.S. city but was actually filmed n Savannah, Georgia. The movie begins by showing a young widow named Mary Lynn Crandon (played by Alexis Knapp) traveling on a rainy night to a house with her daughter Sadie Crandon (played by Kailani Knapp), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. The house is in an isolated wooded area. Mary Lynn tells Sadie to wait outside, but adds, “Don’t come inside until the screaming starts.”

Mary Lynn knocks on the house door and goes inside after there’s no response. But there’s actually someone inside the house: the house owner. She is an eldery woman named Ms. Ambrose (played by Meg Foster), who asks Mary Lynn: “Commune or curse?” Mary Lynn replies, “Curse.” Ms. Ambrose asks for payment. Mary Lynn pays her with blood.

Ms. Ambrose asks, “What fate for the owner of this blood?” Mary Lynn says, “I want the devil himself to take possession of her, for both to be locked in hell forever.” Ms. Amrose says, “The devil himself never takes possession. He sends one of his legions … and it will be whenever he so chooses.”

Ms. Ambrose gives Mary Lynn a knife and says, “You must take this knife and wait for the point of no return, when the demon has gone too far. Ms. Ambrose then adds ominously, “Are you ready to gaze into hell?” Mary Lynn answers, “Yes.”

Ms. Ambrose drinks the blood, but she doesn’t find out until it’s too late that Mary Lynn gave Ms. Ambrose the blood of Ms. Ambrose. Mary Lynn then says as she stabs Ms. Ambrose: “My name is Mary Lynn Crandon. And this is for my husband Thomas!” Sadie is now in the house. Ms. Ambrose howls at Sadie, who breaks off Ms. Ambrose’s fingers.

That’s about as intriguing as it gets in “The Accursed.” The movie than fast forwards to three months later and goes through the dull motions of the aforementioned checklist. Ally will some become acquainted with Ms. Ambrose in a way that’s already revealed from the movie’s opening scene, which shows that Ms. Ambrose unwittingly put a curse on herself to be possessed by a demon.

Elly (played by Sarah Grey) is a pretty blonde in her 20s who has come back to her hometown to oversee the sale of the house that was owned by Elly’s recently deceased mother, Helen Gamble. Elly’s father abandoned the family years ago, when Elly was a child. Before temporarily moving back to her hometown, Elly was living in Haiti, where she was working as a volunteer for an unnamed social cause.

Elly gets a rude and violent welcome home from a neighbor named Mrs. Dudley (played by Antoinette Van Klingeren), who slaps Elly in the face and scolds Elly for not being there when Elly’s mother was dying. It’s implied that Elly’s guilt is the reason why she takes a job on short notice to be the nurse caretaker of a “comatose” elderly woman who lives in a remote house in the woods. That elderly woman, of course, is Ms. Ambrose.

Elly doesn’t know anything about Ms. Ambrose except that Elly’s mother and Ms. Ambrose used to be acquaintances. A woman named Alma Whitemore (played by Mena Suvari), who identifies herself as being in charge of the Ambrose estate, has contacted Elly to hire her. Elly needs the money, so she immediately says yes.

Elly’s hometown best friend Beth (played by Sarah Dumont) is concerned that Elly is going to this stranger’s home, but Elly assures Beth that everything should be fine. Of course, everything isn’t fine. Almost as soon as Elly arrives in this dark and creepy home, she starts having nightmares about her dead mother.

And then “The Accursed” begins a repetition of showing things coming out of Ms. Ambrose’s mouth on separate occasions, including, blood, bile and a gnarly black hand. It’s mentioned at one point in the story that Ms. Ambrose has a daughter named Dorothy. Where Dorothy is should come as no surprise, because at one point in the movie, it becomes very obvious.

And what about Mary Lynn and Sadie, who were seen the beginning of the movie? Mary Lynn and Sadie show up later in the part of the movie where it’s explained why Mary Lynn wants to avenge her dead husband. It’s probably one of the most unimaginative and predictable reasons why a wife would want revenge.

Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with a horror movie using a well-worn concept, as long as there’s enough in the story and in the cast members’ performances to keep viewers engaged in what happens next. “The Accursed” is just a tedious slog of weak jump scares, lackluster acting and a terribly conceived story. The ending of “The Accursed” is so ridiculous, the only people who will feel cursed are viewers who will feel tricked that they wasted their time with this junk.

Screen Media Films released “The Accursed” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on October 14, 2022. The movie was released on Blu-ray and DVD on December 6, 2022.