In this Summer of Superman, Brandon Routh is without superpowers as he battles the creeping, killing “Ick.”

Back in the 2006 “Superman Returns,” Routh, 45, won global recognition as the Man of Steel, battling Lex Luthor and romancing Lois Lane.

“Ick” surprisingly begins back then, with Routh and co-star Mena Suvari (“American Beauty”) looking 20 years younger. Because they’re playing high school sweethearts back in the day before jumping to today in the all-American small town of Eastbrook.

As a teen, Routh’s Hank Wallace lost a promising pro-football career with a crippling injury. Now he’s an ineffective high school science teacher with a telltale limp.

“Hank is not happy. He had no backup plan,” Routh explained in a video interview. “So he’s just in Eastbrook, down and out.”

As the icky Ick mutates from being a benign vine-like growth to a murderous alien entity, Hank might have a surprising, unexpected relationship with his student Grace (Malina Pauli Weissman) who just happens to be the daughter of Suvari’s Staci, his high school romance.

“I’m not really into horror,” Routh allowed. “But I do enjoy horror comedy and monster movies. As I learned more about (writer-director) Joseph Kahn and saw more of his work, I was, ‘I get this! This is going to be fantastic! How we’re going to do it in this budget? But it’s fantastic.”

As to how he and Suvari so effectively lost 20 years, “We first did all the scenes that are in the script. They put makeup on us and tried to make us look a little bit, or me anyway, younger the best they could. As a backup.

“And I adjusted my voice up — which was one of the most constant refrains from Joseph: ‘Younger! A younger voice.’ Then we did a couple different light camera scans with the VFX team in Houston.

“They asked if I had any footage of myself in my early 20s, which I didn’t really, other than photos. Because I wasn’t working as an actor as much as Mena was.

“They compiled as best they could from old footage and the scans they did. I sat in front of my camera and did some turns, the kind of things that I used to do at Sony, back during ‘Superman.’ Then they had this big, huge machine that you had to get into as this, like, an octopus arm goes around, scanning your face and all.

“Anyway, now you can do it with your iPhone, I guess.”

As for what’s next, “Whatever it may bring,” he said, “‘Ick’ allows people to see me in this new light, up on the screen for the first time in quite a few years in a starring movie.”

“Ick” screens Sunday, Monday and Tuesday as a Fathom Event at the AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters