In the early 2000s, during a high school football game in the small town of Eastbrook, Hank Wallace is the star quarterback whose future looks promising until a green, parasitic growth erupts from the turf and lashes his leg, fracturing it. The growth, later named the Ick, embeds itself into the field and spreads outward across the stadium while Hank is carried off on a stretcher. After the injury, Hank's prospects as an athlete vanish and his personal life collapses: his longtime girlfriend Staci leaves him for their classmate Ted Kim, and Hank never manages to leave Eastbrook.

Years pass with Hank rooted in town; he now teaches science at Eastbrook High and continues to live a solitary life. Ted and Staci marry and run a realty business, and the couple raise a daughter, Grace, who becomes one of Hank's students. Outside of Hank's immediate world, the Ick has proliferated over large swathes of the country, but its growth remains mostly tolerated because, for the most part, it spreads slowly and does not immediately kill people. While negotiating the purchase of a run-down bar from Ted and Staci, Hank notices resemblances between Grace and himself and realizes there is a possibility that Grace is his biological daughter. Hank plans to confirm paternity using a sample of saliva that Grace had submitted for a classroom assignment; he keeps the sample in an envelope with the intention of ordering a DNA test.

One night, while Hank is alone, the Ick accelerates its growth and attacks him in the dark. Tendrils of the plant-like organism try to overrun his body, crawling up his arms and clinging to his face. Hank protects himself by donning a UV light therapy mask he uses for an unrelated skin condition; the ultraviolet light prevents the Ick from extending further and forces the tendrils to recede. After the attack, Hank conducts experiments and laboratory work in his classroom and around town, testing the organism's biology. He discovers that the Ick behaves like a photosynthetic plant: it proliferates when left in darkness but becomes dormant, unable to grow, when exposed to UV light. He develops the rudimentary conclusion that artificial ultraviolet illumination can halt the organism's spread.

Hank returns to the bar one evening and finds that a customer has been heavily infected with the Ick, the green growth covering the stranger's limbs and torso, constricting his movement and distorting his features. The infected customer lashes out at Hank in a feral attack, the tendrils striking and attempting to drag Hank into the growth. Hank fights his way free and escapes the bar. The infected customer remains writhing as the Ick continues to consume his body; by the time Hank puts distance between himself and the bar, the man is overwhelmed by the organism and dies as the Ick envelopes him.

Concerned by the bar attack and the organism's sudden aggression, Hank drives to a house party where Grace and several of her classmates are gathered. He bursts into the party uninvited and warns the teenagers that the Ick can infect humans and will kill them if they do not take precautions. The students laugh him off, insist he is overreacting, and return to drinking and dancing. Minutes later, the Ick crashes through doors and windows and slithers into the house. Tendrils snake through the basement, crawl across the floor, and lash into the crowd, infecting some students by wrapping around their necks, pulling them to the floor, and covering their faces. Screams erupt as infected teenagers' bodies are consumed, their motions slowed into grotesque twitches before the green growth overwhelms their faces and chests. Hank fights to help some students but the mass of organic tendrils grows quickly in the dark rooms. Military personnel in tactical gear arrive shortly thereafter; soldiers wield flashlights and portable UV lights and sweep through the house. The troops deploy ultraviolet devices that strip the Ick's mobility and stall its expansion, allowing them to extract survivors and secure the scene. The military cordons off the neighborhood and removes the bodies of those killed at the party.

That evening, the military establishes a presence at a town meeting called by local officials. The unit's commander addresses the residents and orders them to remain indoors with doors and windows secured until further notice. He explains that the unit must prioritize a neighboring town experiencing a more severe outbreak and that resources will be redirected. Residents press the commander for help and evacuation, but he reiterates that Eastbrook must shelter in place while his team leaves to respond elsewhere. After the meeting, many townspeople ignore the commander's directive. They resume social activities, keep businesses open, and travel across town. Without widespread compliance, the Ick takes advantage of routine nighttime darkness and further infiltrates homes and people: household plants sprout tendrils that cross porches, street gutters swell with green filaments, and individuals who walk outside at night are attacked. Several residents are overtaken in their sleep when the Ick seeps through cracks and vents; their faces and bodies are covered, and they die as their lungs and throats become obscured by the plant mass.

Grace, a high school senior, argues with her boyfriend Dylan about their future. After the fight, Hank offers to drive Grace home. While traveling along a dimly lit road, the Ick erupts from the shoulders of the highway and lashes into their car, hitting it from both sides. Vines wrap around the vehicle and twist, forcing the car to flip and crash into a ditch. Hank and Grace crawl out and stagger to the roadside as the Ick continues to writhe around the wreckage. Grace's cousin arrives with a tow truck and begins the process of hauling the car free. While they wait in morning twilight, Grace notices the envelope in Hank's bag--the white paper Hank had placed there to keep the saliva sample safe before sending it to a testing lab. Grace sees the name on the envelope and recognizes that Hank had the sample of her DNA all along. She grabs the envelope with shaking hands and confronts him. She screams that he was never present in her life, that he never acted like a father, and that she will never accept him as a parent. Hank attempts to explain that he simply wanted to know, that he had planned to send the sample away for testing, but Grace refuses to listen and storms off with her cousin. As the tow truck pulls their car from the ditch, Hank watches Grace leave and remains determined to protect her despite her rejection.

Across town, Eastbrook High prepares for senior prom. The school's staff, students, and parents assemble gowns, tuxedoes, decorations, and a DJ. Before the dance, Hank seeks out Staci at the Kim family home to press her about whether Grace might be his daughter. He confronts Staci gently at her kitchen table and asks bluntly if there was a possibility years ago that she and he had been intimate around the time Grace would have been conceived. Staci pauses, visibly uneasy, and begins to weigh the possibility. While she hesitates and Hank watches her closely, a rupture in the lawn occurs: the ground around the house splits and a roiling mass of green tendrils bursts upward. Staci screams as the Ick forms a slurry that moves like quicksand on the grass; the plant pulls at her feet. Before Hank can reach her, the Ick opens like a mouth in the earth and drags Staci downward. Her arms stretch and claw at the dirt as the plant draws her below the surface. Hank slams his hands against the ground and tries to pry her free, but the tendrils constrict and the lawn closes over her. Staci disappears beneath the soil; the Ick seals and the disturbance settles. Staci is killed when the organism pulls her underground and covers her body with plant growth, crushing and suffocating her as it consumes her. Hank staggers back, stunned, his question left unanswered.

Prom night begins with the gym decorated in balloons and streamers. Students enter wearing corsages and boutonnieres, laughing and posing for pictures, but the mood sours when the Ick infiltrates the school. Tendrils weave through the vents and down the corridors, wrapping banisters and creeping beneath doors. In the darkened gym, the plant reaches across the floor and lashes into dancers, smothering them with wet, green filaments. The Ick drags chaperones and attendees into shadowed corners. Ted, who is chaperoning the dance, tries to pull students to safety, but the Ick seizes him, winding around his legs and arms. He is pulled into the growth and swallowed as the salamander-like mass covers his face and chest. Ted dies when the Ick engulfs him; his body is incorporated into the organism. Elsewhere in the school, Dylan becomes infected when tendrils coil around him and push into his mouth and sinuses. He moves clumsily and with a vacant expression as the Ick alters his behavior. Hank confronts Dylan, who lunges toward Grace; Hank wrestles Dylan away and drags Grace to the emergency exit. The Ick closes in behind them, shuttering doors and flooding the halls with crawling vines. Hank, Grace, Heather, and Griffin sprint through the corridors, tripping over fallen bodies as the plant engulfs teachers and classmates who had been caught dancing. The quartet forces their way out of the building and into the night.

Outside the school, Hank and the three students find the football stadium lights still functioning. Hank rigs the lights to illuminate the field and aims them toward the mass of Ick that has coalesced into a giant tentacled formation outside the school's perimeter. The ultraviolet-infused stadium bulbs flash and the creature's advances slow: the organism's tentacles stiffen and retract where the UV reaches, and whole sections of the growth become inert beneath the intense light. Hank, Grace, Heather, and Griffin watch as the Ick's movement becomes sluggish beneath the illumination. The temporary truce holds as the lights prevent the plant's further spreading, but the creature alters tactics; rather than press forward, the Ick contracts and pulls itself downward. It sinks beneath the soil and destabilizes the ground beneath the light towers by tunneling and bulking up in the lanes below, causing the earth that supports the floodlights to slump and fracture. The stadium lights topple and snap as the ground caves; exposed wiring shorts and the bulbs go dark. With the ultraviolet illumination extinguished, the Ick becomes mobile again.

Realizing that the organism cannot tolerate sunlight, Hank pushes the group to find the highest place in town where they can wait for dawn. They converge on a radio transmission tower on the outskirts of Eastbrook. As Hank, Grace, Heather, and Griffin begin their ascent, a crush of other students and townspeople race to join them, seeking refuge above the reach of the plant below. The Ick lashes upward and wraps around climbers who cannot hold on. One by one, panicked citizens are seized by the tendrils as they climb: fingers are pulled from metal rungs, bodies are yanked off the tower and flung into the Ick's awaiting mass, and screams echo up the steel. Most of the people trying to climb the tower are killed as the Ick plucks them from the ladder and drags them down to be consumed. Below the tower, the Ick coils like a net around those it captures and swallows them into the living mass. Only Hank, Grace, Heather, and Griffin reach the summit and wedge themselves into the narrow platform beneath the radio antenna. They perch there as the first rays of sunlight edge over the horizon. The sun's light spills down across Eastbrook and strikes the Ick in full. Under direct sunlight, the organism ceases its movement almost immediately: its tendrils harden, its surface dries, and the mass goes inert in place, entering a suspended state. The living effect of the Ick stops; the plant remains present, vast and still, but no longer actively attacking. From the tower top, Hank, Grace, Heather, and Griffin watch as sunlight paralyzes the Ick across the town.

After the sunlight halts the organism's activity, emergency crews and surviving townspeople move through Eastbrook to assess the damage. They find bodies caught in the Ick's mass and extract the dead. The military returns with ultraviolet equipment and assists in securing infected zones, but local survivors take primary responsibility for overnight protection. Residents and municipal workers install ultraviolet floodlights and UV lamps on houses, along streets, and around critical points like the school, hospital, and downtown businesses to keep the Ick from regaining mobility after dusk. Barricades are set, generators are placed to power the lights, and a curfew is enforced to minimize night travel. Over the following days, life in Eastbrook adapts around the new defensive measures: businesses reopen with UV fixtures in their doorways, students attend classes under special lights, and local law enforcement patrols with portable UV torches.

Grace softens toward Hank over the ensuing weeks. She begins to accept him as a father figure and spends more time with him as he helps coordinate the town's protective lighting and teaches citizens how to deploy UV devices. One afternoon, Grace confesses to Hank that she mailed in the saliva sample he had kept; she wanted to know the truth for herself. Hank and Grace both wait for the official paternity report. When the results arrive in the mail, Hank opens the envelope with Grace beside him on the porch of his modest home. The laboratory report confirms the testing outcome, and both Hank and Grace read the findings. They exchange a look and react with unease to what the results show, their faces tightening, but the film ends without revealing their further conversation. Outside, Eastbrook continues to glow each night with ultraviolet lamps arrayed across porches and intersections, and townspeople live with the knowledge that, as long as the lights burn, the Ick remains in stasis beneath the surface.

At the end of Ick (2024), the parasitic alien substance known as the Ick becomes fully active and aggressively infects the town, leading to a chaotic and violent confrontation. Hank Wallace, the science teacher and former football star, along with his student Grace, who may be his daughter, fight to survive the outbreak. The film concludes with the Ick overwhelming the town, leaving the fate of Hank, Grace, and other main characters uncertain but implying a grim outcome as the alien infestation spreads uncontrollably.

The ending of Ick unfolds in a tense, escalating sequence of events that begin as the alien parasite, dormant and largely ignored for years, suddenly becomes active and hostile. The film's final act opens with the Ick rapidly growing and infecting people in Eastbrook, transforming them into grotesque, possessed beings. This outbreak is sudden and violent, catching most townspeople off guard.

Hank Wallace, who has spent years studying the Ick and trying to understand its nature, is prepared with a UV light therapy mask that inhibits the parasite's growth. Despite this, he faces direct attacks from infected individuals, including a terrifying encounter in a bar where a customer fully overtaken by the Ick tries to kill him. Hank narrowly escapes, using his knowledge of the Ick's vulnerability to UV light to protect himself.

Meanwhile, Grace, Hank's student and the daughter of his former girlfriend Staci, is caught in the chaos. The film suggests that Grace may be Hank's biological daughter, adding emotional stakes to their struggle. As the Ick spreads, Grace and Hank work together, trying to find a way to stop the parasite's advance.

The climax features a chaotic party scene where the Ick overtakes many of the attendees, turning the event into a nightmarish battleground. Hank and Grace fight through the infected crowd, using UV light and scientific insight to fend off the parasite's attempts to consume them.

In the final moments, the Ick's growth appears unstoppable, engulfing the town and its inhabitants. The film ends on an ambiguous note regarding the survival of Hank and Grace, with the overwhelming presence of the Ick suggesting that the parasite will continue to spread beyond Eastbrook. The fate of other key characters, such as Staci and Ted Kim, is left unclear, but the implication is that the Ick's infestation has devastated the community.

This ending highlights the film's themes of ignored threats and societal complacency, showing how the townspeople's initial dismissal of the Ick leads to catastrophic consequences. Hank's role as the lone knowledgeable figure underscores the tension between awareness and denial in the face of an existential danger.

The movie "Ick" (2024) does not have any mention or indication of a post-credit scene in the available reviews and summaries. The sources describe the film's ending and overall experience but do not reference any scenes after the credits. One review notes a moment just before the credits where a surviving teen asks, "Are we done now, or…?" which suggests the film ends shortly after without additional post-credit content. No other sources mention any post-credit scenes for this movie.

Grace, a student of Hank Wallace and the daughter of his former girlfriend Staci, is revealed to be possibly Hank's daughter, which he plans to confirm with a paternity test using her saliva sample.

Hank uses a UV light therapy mask to prevent the Ick, a parasitic plant-like substance, from growing on him, as the Ick only grows in the dark and becomes stagnant when exposed to UV light.

The Ick is a parasitic, plant-like substance that grows mostly benignly and slowly throughout Hank's hometown and beyond, growing in the dark through photosynthesis and becoming active and dangerous when it suddenly starts infecting and consuming people.

Hank was Staci's boyfriend in high school before his injury; Staci left Hank for their classmate Ted Kim, who later marries Staci and runs a successful realty business, while Hank remains in town as a science teacher.

At the party, the Ick suddenly becomes active and causes chaos by possessing and destroying attendees, marking a turning point where the parasitic threat escalates from benign presence to violent outbreak.

The 2024 movie Ick is rated R in the United States and 15 in the UK, indicating it is not fully family-friendly for young children. It is described as a PG-13 horror film by the director intended as a "gateway horror" for millennial parents and their Gen-Z kids, but the official rating and content suggest caution for younger or sensitive viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects include:

• Violence and Gore: Moderate levels, with scenes of the alien "Ick" attacking, infecting, and consuming people, including graphic depictions like ripping victims in half and zombie-like infections with disturbing visual effects such as black veins and white eyes.
• Frightening and Intense Scenes: Rated severe by some viewers, involving horror elements that could be disturbing for children or sensitive individuals.
• Mild Sexual Content: Some mild sexual references or sounds (e.g., a girl heard moaning).
• Mild Profanity and Substance Use: Mild use of profanity and mild depiction of alcohol, drugs, or smoking.

Overall, while Ick has comedic and satirical elements and is somewhat toned down compared to typical adult horror, it still contains enough horror violence, intensity, and mature themes that it may not be suitable for younger children or very sensitive viewers. Parents should consider these factors before allowing children to watch it.