PLOT: An idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results.
REVIEW: It’s been very cool to see what Eli Roth has been doing with his independent studio, The Horror Section. Last year, he released Joe Begos’ Jimmy and Stiggs as well as Dream Eater, presenting a great new avenue for Indie Horror to find distribution. Now, he’s stepping behind the camera himself (and in front of it, too), and trying to introduce the world to a new horror villain: The Ice Cream Man. With a trailer that promised plenty of carnage, does Roth’s latest deliver more than just gore?
Ice Cream Man focuses on a small town as a mysterious treat vendor appears, quickly affecting all the kids who partake. We’re mostly following the brother and sister duo of Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) and Lizzie (Sarah Abbott) as they notice the other kids becoming mindless killers. It’s a very basic premise that shares no connection to the Clint Howard film of the same name. Roth’s film is the epitome of a “turn your brain off” kind of movie. Every character is painfully dumb, and it’s got more gore than you’ll even know what to do with. But is that really enough to keep an audience entertained these days?
Roth has always had an issue when it comes to crafting characters that we want to see get killed. He tends to present those characters in a way that makes spending any time with them miserable, and I want them to go away. Ideally, we’d get characters we want to root for and not see die, but that’s simply not in the cards. It doesn’t help that nearly every performance is awful, with the leads being particularly rough. I’m not sure anyone could have made some of this dialogue work, though. The fact that there’s a Mitt Romney joke had me checking to make sure I wasn’t transported to 2012.
I really liked the visual aesthetic of Ari Millen as The Ice Cream Man, but he has shockingly little to do here. I won’t deny that he looks creepy, but his lack of action makes him feel like a complete waste. He’s merely manipulating these kids to commit his crimes. And it’s made even worse by the fact that he’s brushed to the side even further in the final act. Yes, in a movie called “Ice Cream Man“, he’s constantly playing second fiddle. It’s a baffling decision, but one of many that completely misses the mark. At least the kids seem to be having an outright blast murdering every adult that comes across their path.
I never realized how much limiting deaths can increase their effectiveness, but the opposite is assuredly true as well. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good deaths here, but there ends up so being many that they start to just blend together. When someone’s head is being ripped off and it just feels like another day at the office, then there’s too much desensitization going on. And since the gore happens so quickly, it means the final act is the least effective of them all. It doesn’t help that there’s a twist near the end that is so painfully telegraphed that I was surprised they then took so long to actually reveal it.
It’s also hard not to notice the visual similarities between the kids in this and the big finale of Weapons. I’m sure it’s less of a ripoff and more of a coming up with two similar ideas, but it’s going to be hard to avoid the comparison. Especially when it’s shot in the same aspect ratio and features similar locations.
I absolutely loved Thanksgiving, but Ice Cream Man feels like a massive step back for Roth in every conceivable way. This is the kind of movie where if someone is just off-screen, then they do not exist until they actually appear. Had this been more satire, it may have worked, but instead it feels like a lack of forethought or care. The only priority appears to be the kills, and everything else comes second. This results in a film that feels more like a death reel than something with an actual story or characters. While I could easily see this getting a sequel, I’m really hoping this Ice Cream Truck just rides off into the sunset, never to be seen again.
Ice Cream Man is playing in theaters on August 7th, 2026 and you can purchase tickets for it HERE.
