The Ice Cream Man Review

“That ice cream’s demonic” – Jared

Sometimes, a film idea looks great on paper – but its realisation on the big screen doesn’t work out. Case in point, George Clooney as Batman in Batman and Robin.

Sometimes, a successful director gets swept away by both his own success and succumbs to excess. Case in point, Steven Spielberg and 1941.

Sometimes, I undertake the 90 mile round trip to the multiplex to see a movie I like the look of, (why else would I?) and I end up seeing The Ice Cream Man.

I should’ve known better. I really should. Even the staff warned me before I went in. But, unperturbed, in I went. Only to slink out at the end of the screening wondering where it all went wrong. And those are the thoughts that’ve been nagging at me all the way home, and ever since.

This is Eli Roth’s latest movie, and the trailer caught my attention. After all, I enjoyed Roth’s last horror film, Thanksgiving (2023). In fact, I’ve been following his career since Cabin Fever (2002), Hostel (2005), The House with a Clock in its Walls (2018) – all these and more. Roth is always a reliable and capable horror director. Okay, some of his visuals can be a little much at times, but that’s just his style. Roth’s horror movies usually flip between surprising and shocking. But they’re always entertaining.

But this time, he fell way short of the mark and I think listened to his ego rather than his creativity.

The film starts off well enough, with an idyllic summer scene in a small American town. People are happy – it could almost be a Norman Rockwell painting. Kids are playing little league baseball; there’s an ice cream truck with a bow tied salesman handing out treats. But a closer look shows there are cracks in the idyllic facade. Wow, those kids are foul mouthed f-bomb dropping little thugs. And I guess that’s realistic (I mean have you heard kids these days?) But there’s something off about the Ice Cream Man as well, not that he says anything…like anything at all. But there’s a satanic smirk under his perfectly manicured pencil moustache.

And well might he smirk – the ice cream he’s selling to all the town kids, or at least 95% of them, turns them into homicidal maniacs overnight.

I’ll step in here. So far, the movie sounds like an ideal summer horror movie. And it’s one that would definitely appeal to me. But this is where everything turns to what comes out of the back end of a bull.

Okay, so the kids turn in to homicidal maniacs, which is the gist of the film. In fact, it’s more than that because there’s an extended collection of scenes showing the kids slaughtering parents, teachers, police, in fact any adult who crosses their path. I’m a horror movie fan, have been for over fifty years, and onscreen gore doesn’t bother me. What DOES bother me is when it’s repeated on and on and on in the absence of a narrative. The hefty slaughter scenes in this film take up the entire middle part of the movie – and THAT’S the problem.

Within a story, to make a point or heighten dramatic effect, yes, gore is effective. But if you’re sitting in a movie theatre watching some kids decapitate someone with a saw, then someone gets disembowelled, another gets cut in half, another has his arms and legs torn off, and on and on and on… It’s a fatal flaw, because as soon as we’ve seen the first couple, we don’t need to see the 30 or 40 butcherings that follow. Kids slaughtering adults are something we’ve seen before, and used with restraint and subtlety it’s always going to be shocking. Except here, where we the audience get numb to it within a couple of minutes, with many, many more minutes to go. It’s not shocking, it’s pure excess that’s actually veering toward the cardinal film sin of being boring.

There’s no build up, and to be frank – the kids who are supposed to be the “good” kids, who are uninfected are so underdeveloped as characters, we have zero sympathy for them, so no audience buy-in. The film is so badly underwritten that even though they see their friends kill their teachers, their parents, other uninfected kids – they have no reaction. They’re not upset.

This is, unfortunately a shallow film. No, it’s worse, it’s hollow. The plot is flimsy at best, with any revelation coming in the third act. And it’s too little, too late – Roth has already lost the audience. He lost it early in the lengthy splatter fest that formed the entire second act. Unfortunately, to me it seems that Roth watched The Stuff (1985) and Weapons (2025) – then swallowed a can of alphabet spaghetti and crapped out this mess.

Its only saving graces are a homage to a scene in Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds (1963) where the birds are quietly massing on a school jungle gym ready for an attack, behind the heroine without her realising they’re there. Along with the opening act, which was then wasted for the remaining hour, that’s what elevated this film from getting a lowly 2. But I can’t, in all conscience give it a Rob rating higher than 3

Trust me – there’s nothing to see here, move on. Go see Spider-Man: Brand New Day again, I swear you’ll be happier.

Rob Rating = 3