OVERVIEW
It is one of the last days of school in a peaceful suburban town. After a baseball game, an ice cream truck parks near the field and starts giving cones away for free. Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) is lactose intolerant, so he is the only kid who doesn’t have any. During the night, the truck starts roaming through the streets, and all the kids who had a taste wake up ready to kill their parents and all the adults of that town.
BACKGROUND
This film was made possible by Terrifier 3, which cost $2 million, grossed around $90 million, and became the highest-grossing unrated film ever released in the United States. Eli Roth, coming off the fiasco that was Borderlands, both critically and commercially, was able to secure financing through his own label, The Horror Section, backed by the finance company Media Capital Technologies, and, like the killer clown before him, decided to skip the MPA entirely. Marketing spend was minimal, but the film generated plenty of headlines after Roth confirmed the use of generative AI in a few scenes.
THE REVIEW
Looking at it on its own terms, Ice Cream Man is not that far removed from Roth’s best-received film, Thanksgiving. Its script is merely an excuse to connect a series of killings that are cruel and unapologetically mean-spirited. Roth is once again less interested in constructing memorable set pieces than in shocking the audience with gruesome imagery, and it is easy to start feeling numb after the second or third decapitation. At the same time, it fully commits to its ridiculous premise: children with ice cream-covered mouths trying to recruit the last uncontaminated kids while brutally murdering every parent, teacher, and elderly neighbor they encounter.
It works as well as it does mainly because of how well the first act unfolds before the violence begins, being equally patient and economical, while also setting a nostalgic tone. Backed by Brandon Roberts’ score, which recalls Jerry Goldsmith’s work on The ‘Burbs and Gremlins, the film instantly evokes the spirit of Amblin productions of the 80s through its bright colors, wider compositions, and measured introduction of its characters. It is easy to overlook, but Roth is remarkably efficient at establishing the many players who will become important later. Despite a large roster, we never lose sight of who everyone is.
The killings are wildly over the top but well realized, with every cut and sound effect making you feel the impact with its use of practical effects. It does get tiring seeing arms being cut off and heads being torn, and teachers being massacred by children, yet the film rarely pauses. Its action scenes have two modes: it is either repeating similar things and growing stale, or pushing it even more ridiculously over the top, as in a scene where a character is served to eat his own brain, à la Hannibal, which feels gratuitous, trying too hard to shock for shock’s sake.
There is barely any breathing room between the carnage, but what little exists works well enough. The young actors recall the child performances of many 80s films. They may not always feel like real children, but they remain compelling characters. The Ice Cream Man himself receives very little attention, and the sequence explaining his origins became the film’s most controversial scene because of its use of AI. It certainly looks awkward, but the backlash feels exaggerated. A more legitimate criticism is Roth’s misguided sense of humor, particularly when the character he plays jokes about wanting to watch teenagers in bikinis. Outside of those obvious pitfalls, Ice Cream Man entertains more than it has any right to. Watching the army of possessed children steadily grow and overwhelm the town, particularly during the school attack, has its moments.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As serviceable as an ice cream from an ice cream truck, Ice Cream Man recaptures some of the spirit of 80s family adventures before turning them into gleefully nasty horror. It delivers a handful of inventive kills along the way and, while it may leave you feeling more disgusted than satisfied, it gives you almost exactly what you came for.
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- Where to watch
- Out of Theaters
- Where to watch
- In Theaters
Play trailer
- Original title
- Ice Cream Man
- Director
- Eli Roth
- Cast
- Ari Millen, Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, Benjamin Byron Davis, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco
- Rated
- 18A
- Screenwriter
- Eli Roth, Noah Belson
- Composer
- Brandon Roberts
- Cinematography
- Simon Shohet
- Editor
- Matt Lyon
- Country
- Language
- English
- Budget
- $5.5 million
- Box office
- $5.91 million
- Distributor (CA)
- Elevation Pictures