Review: ICE CREAM MAN

 by Patrick Bromley

Eli Roth does it again.

Yes, Eli Roth does it again with Ice Cream Man. The "it" in that sentence is doing a lot of work, because if you're not a fan of the filmmaker's work there's nothing here that's going to turn you around. It is a non-stop assault of gore and juvenile anarchy, less a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end than it is a violent sketch played out to feature length. It's a 90-minute effects reel demonstrating every possible way to mutilate and eviscerate the human body as punchline after punchline. Some of you will read that and immediately know you want to stay as far away as you can. Others of you will read that and will want to see the movie as soon as possible. Just don't say you weren't warned.

If you were to combine The Stuff with Cooties and Troma's Beware: Children at Play and the last 15 minutes of Weapons, you would more or less get Ice Cream Man. The film stars Ari Millen in a wordless role as the titular Ice Cream Man, who enters into a picturesque suburb and feeds all of the children frozen treats. That night, all of the kids go crazy and become mindless, pint-sized murders, wreaking havoc on all of the adults in over-the-top and disgusting fashion. A few kids who haven't consumed the ice cream (including Charlie Zeltzer and Ginny & Georgia's Sarah Abbott) try to escape the outbreak. That's pretty much it: once the premise has been established, writer/director Eli Roth uses it as a clothesline on which to hang gore gag after gore gag, rinse, repeat, roll credits. 

Eli Roth is a controversial figure in the genre for a whole bunch of reasons. His movies are divisive, his politics and past problematic for many. Independent of all that, I have pretty much liked every movie he's actually directed (yes, including Death Wish) even when it's taken me time or multiple viewings to come around on some. If I am able to separate the art from the artist, I have been a fan of the former going back to his first films. Cabin Fever and the Hostel films are among my favorite horror movies of the 2000s, and I thought Thanksgiving was a terrific slasher with a decidedly retro feel -- the kind of thing made for VHS even when it's not rolling out its old-school influences every couple of minutes like so much post-Grindhouse horror. Ice Cream Man seems to be going for that, too, though it's much accomplished in that arena. The film wants to present 90 minutes of little kids fucking people up. In that, I suppose it succeeds.

The irony of Ice Cream Man, sure to be savaged by both genre critics and non-genre critics alike, is that if it had been a 1990 release that was recently unearthed and restored to 4K by the likes of Vinegar Syndrome, horror fans would be going crazy for it. The movie has that kind of energy, feeling more like DIY regional horror than anything with a studio budget. That's probably because Roth has forgone big studios this time around, instead opting to release Ice Cream Man through his recently-founded label The Horror Section (the same company responsible for putting out Joe Begos' insane Jimmy & Stiggs last year). That gives Roth the freedom to do whatever he wants on screen, including making a movie that consists of 90 minutes of gore and edgelord humor, all involving children (12-year olds with eating disorders! Ha!). I'm happy to for any horror filmmaker to have that kind of creative license. I'm not sure Roth makes the best use of it.

I enjoyed parts of Ice Cream Man more than I probably should in spite of myself, laughing out loud at several of the gags -- in some cases because of the timing, in some of the effect, and in some rare cases out of disbelief at what the director was putting on screen. In the end, none of this matters because Roth recently confirmed the use of generative AI in making the movie. That means I can't really support the movie and can't recommend anyone else does either. I'll stop writing here because it's what we call a "dealbreaker." If you need to see Ice Cream Man at some point in your life, wait 40 years until AI has taken over and our insect overlords are putting it out on special edition Blu-ray. That's how it's meant to be seen.