Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man is all mayhem with virtually zero thinking required
Ice Cream Man isn’t so much a movie as it is a referendum on Eli Roth.
He’s a polarizing director, to say the least. Some of the criticisms lobbed against him are VERY valid and some just feel like egregious nitpicks. Basically, however you feel about Roth — the director and the person — heading into the film is going to paint your reception to Ice Cream Man. If you like Roth’s ‘80s revivalist homage stylings, you might love this movie. And if you think he’s a talentless, thieving hack, a shameless misogynist and a Greta Thunberg-hating Zionist … well, Ice Cream Man isn’t going to change your opinion there.
Ice Cream Man is an interesting film, even if it’s difficult to call it an objectively good one. For starters, it’s bulldozing into theaters sans any kind of MPAA rating, which seems like it would be a much bigger story in the realm of cinema. Alongside films like Terrifier 3, we’re seeing the slow death of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system in real time, which has boundless repercussions on indie filmmakers, small studio accessibility and obviously the kind of content we can see in mainstream-ish movies. Of course, that’s lost in the shuffle because Roth and pals opted to use artificial intelligence for a couple of scenes — which I think are a few brief animated sequences, but I’m not saying that in 100 percent confidence — and all of a sudden we’ve got yet another controversy undergirding the movie.
Yes, a lot of hardcore horror community commentators are vivisecting the film online (some of whom haven’t even seen the entire movie yet.) I kinda get the feeling they’re taking their pre-existing grudges against Roth into the movie and simply projecting them onto the film itself. It calls to mind the brouhaha over Scream 7 earlier this year, with all of those promised protests against the film … only for it to shatter franchise box office records despite (or perhaps because?) of all of the internet furor. Long story short, there seems to be a vivid disconnect between the world as seen by agitated horror influencers and the world as it actually exists in middle America. As crazy as it may sound, I’d guess that the majority of people who pay tickets to see Ice Cream Man have no idea WHO Eli Roth is in the first place and couldn’t care less about whatever his political allegiances are. They’re just there to see blood, guts and gore, and on that front, I doubt any of them would be terribly disappointed.
I haven’t said a whole lot about the movie itself. Amazingly, that’s not an oversight on my part. Ice Cream Man is about as close to a completely plotless movie as I’ve seen at the cineplex in ages. There’s maybe ten minutes of exposition followed by 70 minutes of relentless carnage — then something that kinda resembles a denouement, but not really. You really can’t describe the plot of the movie as much as you do play by play for the gore effects. I’d call it the Troma version of Weapons, if not for the fact that the 1989 cult classic Beware! Children At Play pretty much IS the Troma version of Weapons already.
And Ice Cream Man is DEFINITELY inspired by Beware! alongside any number of killer tyke movies we’ve gotten over the years, from The Children to Cooties (by the way, the people who made that particular movie are NOT happy with Roth’s production.) Oddly enough, seemingly the only horror movie that isn’t obliquely referenced by Ice Cream Man is the 1995 version of Ice Cream Man starring Clint Howard. The names are identical, but story-wise they have virtually noting in common besides the whole congealed dessert motif.
Roth runs through the gore effects gauntlet in this one. We’ve got the pinking shears matricide from the original Night of the Living Dead, we’ve got the brain scooping cannibalism from Bloodsucking Freaks, we’ve even got the fire extinguisher face bashing montage on loan from Irreversible. There’s not a whole lot of originality here, which I suppose is the point. This is Roth getting about as close as he’s ever gotten to his obvious dream project, a movie that’s basically a feature-length highlight reel of over the top ‘80s splatter effects with no plot to get in the way of the story. If you’re just in it to watch people incur compound fractures and immolations and multiple forms of miter saw-related trauma, you’ll have nothing to complain about. Alas, if you want something that actually resembles a real movie, though, you’re gonna’ have a hard time sitting through this one.
It’s a bit of a bait and switch movie. Without knuckling too deep into spoiler territory, there is an eponymous ice cream man, and he does seem to have some sort of supernatural spell on the middle schoolers of small town America. Of course, we don’t get the explanation until the final 15 minutes of the movie, at which point it feels like it was literally shoehorned in there at the last second to keep the sequel potential alive. Ultimately, it’s not really important why the kids in the movie are turning into ice cream zombie serial killers, it’s simply the fact that they are. Nobody asked why the birds in The Birds went crazy all of a sudden, so why should we apply the same rationality to this movie?
It’s a movie that lacks any strong performances, but again, I feel like that’s by design. This is basically Roth working his way through his lifelong arrested development issues, trying to recreate his own patchwork Sleepaway Camp or Bad News Bears to feed his inner Bart Simpson. I’m not surprised to see Roth show up as a supporting character — an attorney who keeps making jokes about Mitt Romney, for some inscrutable reason. Some people say Eli is stuck in the ‘80s, but after watching his performance in this movie, I wonder if he isn’t stuck in 2012 instead.
Ice Cream Man is a review-proof movie. Nothing I can say will make the people who want to hate it reconsider it and nothing I can say will make the people who already love it out of principle rethink their convictions. It’s a mayhem movie that tries very hard to land in NC-17 territory, but it lacks anything that you might consider adult sensibilities — you know, inconsequential stuff like a “story,” or “solid acting,” or “consistent logic.”
Fittingly enough, Ice Cream Man is kinda like eating too much ice cream. You can’t deny the instant gratification, but once the bellyache kicks in, it’s a truly dreadful experience.
GIVE IT A TRY IF YOU LIKE: Cabin Fever, Children of the Corn, directors having too much carte blanche
DIRECTOR: Eli Roth
WRITER(s): Eli Roth, Noah Belson
STARRING: Ari Millen, Charlie Zeltzer, Sarah Abbott, Eli Roth
STUDIO: The Horror Section, MCT Studios
DISTRIBUTOR: Iconic Events Releasing
RUNTIME: 86 minutes
LANGUAGE: English
RELEASE DATE: August 07, 2026
