It’s already been a successful year for horror at the box office, with Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and Curry Barker’s Obsession being massive sleeper hits. It’s great when genre films exceed expectations and resonate with audiences. However, writer-director Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man won’t be one of those films.
Roth gives us a splatterfest set on repeat, where the endless loop of childlike gore, committed by children, quickly loses its comedic luster. The film becomes a derivative exercise in nonsense.
It’s Hard to Enjoy Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man
Following the idea of horror’s many facets, director Eli Roth has always tried to shock and awe audiences through subject matter, gore, blood, or all of the above. The first two Hostel films are a prime example. The idea behind them is somewhat plausible, as horrifying as that may be.
One of the big failings of Ice Cream Man is that the children in the film, possessed by demonic ice cream, tire quickly. The leap of faith the audience needs to make to enjoy this, even on the level of the ludicrous, falls flat, leaving the rinse/repeat cycle of it all a bore.
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A mysterious Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen) rolls into the town of Bayleen Bay. After delivering his tasty treats to the kids, they turn into hellspawn, killing every adult in their line of sight. Roth uses a mix of practical and digital effects to make each kill as distinct and gory as possible. They use power tools, baseball bats, and an assortment of devices found in an everyday school.
A few kids are unaffected and led by Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), who, being lactose intolerant, didn’t eat the ice cream. He tries to figure out how to survive and stop the Ice Cream Man before the whole town of kids is enslaved. Meanwhile, everyone else is either dead or running for their lives.
There is an attempt to build an actual plot alongside all the blood and gore. It involves a revenge deal with a necromancer so the Ice Cream Man can seek revenge. The rushed, exposition-heavy push explains why the Ice Cream Man exists. It works fine, since no one is watching the film for its deep, layered plot. However, it’s all done so clumsily, seemingly as an afterthought, that it becomes as laughable as the rest of the film.
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Roth’s persistent use of bad jokes and graphic gore seems to be his way of telling viewers not to take things seriously and to simply enjoy the chaos. While this approach is acceptable on its own, the ongoing sense that Roth is winking at the audience or implying, “Look what I did, isn’t it clever?’ in certain scenes can be irritating and tiresome.
In addition, there are some truly awful lines of dialogue. The cringy lines take the viewer out of the film so often that it’s easy to forget you’re supposed to enjoy yourself at a movie.
Ice Cream Man Manages to Bore, Even at a Brisk 90 Minutes
The film was shrouded in controversy before it was even released. His discussion of an animated sequence led to an admission that he had used AI in a few scenes. The old adage about there being no such thing as bad press is pushed to the limit here. AI is a controversial topic among creatives in the industry, and rightly so. This had people screaming at the top of their lungs before the film even hit theaters.
That being said, there is nothing redeeming about Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, AI or not. Instead of a jolly good gory time, it is monotonous, devolving into an endless repetition of blood, gore, and mayhem with no real sense of purpose or direction.
Laughing throughout the film for all the wrong reasons, I was left wondering who the target audience was. I also wondered whether anyone else was as bored as I was by the halfway mark.
The film is now playing in theaters.
