Hit-and-miss horror director Eli Roth whiffs with his latest, Ice Cream Man, a meaningless gorefest that wastes some good practical bloody effects on a nothing story.
This mess has no redeeming value. It is the director’s very worst film—and this is the guy who made The Green Inferno.
Some kids in an all-American town start acting weird and killing people after eating treats from the Ice Cream Man. That’s it. That’s the movie. Apart from a few semi-inspired moments of violent debauchery, this sucker has no pulse. It’s just a bunch of parents and teachers getting slaughtered by marauding, zombified kids.
Roth has always been a bit strange. He hit high horror notes with his debut, Cabin Fever (2002) and sophomore effort Hostel (2005), but moved on to complete crapfests with Hostel: Part II (2007) and, ugh, The Green Inferno (2013). He righted the ship a bit with the Keanu Reeves-starring Knock Knock (2015), but slipped up with his awful remake of Death Wish (2018) and his first non-horror effort, The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018). While Thanksgiving (2023) was a solid return to horror, Borderlands (2024) was a massive, mainstream sci-fi effort that bombed miserably.
Unrated and unhinged, Ice Cream Man makes the mistake of depending solely upon its bloody moments. Some of them are good—bravo to the ice cream-scooped brains bit—but they feel episodic and unconnected. The title character, a grinning Ari Millen, does not convey menace. He’s just a vehicle for handing out the poisoned treats. While the film tries to wind up with a big, jaw-dropping reason for the Ice Cream Man’s actions, the reveal arrives with a resounding thud.
The career of Roth, who makes an appearance as one of the unfortunate parents, is in a true state of disarray. Roth has been teasing Thanksgiving 2, but the failure of The Ice Cream Man could put that project in peril.
Shallow horror with no sense of purpose has no place in cinema at the moment, with brainy, low-cost horror films like Obsession and Backrooms setting a new standard.
Roth needs to reboot and try something new. Beheadings and disembowelments married to a nothing plot were all the rage in 1982—but not so much in the 21st century.