Ice Cream Man, 2026.
Directed by Eli Roth.
Starring Ari Millen, Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, Benjamin Byron Davis, Eli Roth and Snoop Dogg.
SYNOPSIS:
An idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results.
Right when it registers that the comically ultraviolent Ice Cream Man – which essentially sees young children zombified from the deliciously cold treat sold by the titular vendor (a wordless, smiling oddball played by Ari Millen) with an insatiable bloodlust to murder any adult in sight, even if it’s their parents – is actually fun and contains an imaginative sense of humor regarding its murderous mayhem, co-writer/director Eli Roth gets in his own way, slowing the proceedings to a crawl with an origin story that leads to an unnecessarily grim, deflating climax. In other words, he comes close to making a worthwhile grindhouse endeavor.
It is perhaps for the best that there aren’t any real characters here, as it’s primarily concerned with being a full-on onslaught of severed limbs and gore, to the point where it quickly becomes numbing watching any of these people die, whether it’s a teacher, elderly woman, or whoever. The film’s first extended set piece observes children waking up in the middle of the night to dispatch their parents in ways that are either viciously brutal (sawing a head off) or absurdly amusing (a mousetrap on a father’s foot, followed by a sibling whacking him with a frying pan when he sits up while shrieking in pain), with the latter serving as a prime example of the violence that works here.
Technically, there is a group of protagonists who did not consume the ice cream for one reason or another (such as being lactose intolerant), involving Jared (Charlie Zeltser), his older teenage sibling Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman, who impressively handles paralyzing physicality in one bit upon not fully digesting the ice cream, reminiscent of the Quaaludes scene in The Wolf of Wall Street)), and a couple of others (a nerdy girl, for example) who are merely here so we have someone to root for rather than anything resembling characterization. Mia also has a dimwitted, on-and-off boyfriend, Chris (Dylan Hawco), who offers survival assistance.
At school the next day, the elementary students are surrounded by their afflicted peers, who don’t get through a single class before transforming the building into a war zone where anything and everything is a weapon; science teachers have their eyeballs shoved into microscopes, and the playground especially makes for some inspired fatalities that often strikes a cross between Looney Tunes and Home Alone antics, that is if Macaulay Culkin was a zombie with dried-up ice cream slathered all over his mouth, hell-bent on killing the adults around him inside a school. To be clear, the same can’t be said for every kill here, as a good amount of it is also uninspired, humorless gore for the sake of it.
Even if the opening 20 minutes are slow by the standard of a movie that’s only 79 minutes long without credits, what’s impressive is how long Eli Roth (working with screenwriter Noah Belson and several actors he has worked with before in the past) keeps that chaos in the school sustained, seamlessly moving from one area to the next. The protagonist children never feel in danger, which allows our attention to shift to enjoying the outlandish deaths without feeling much of anything about their demise. At times, it’s a demented riot, and it’s as if Eli Roth noticed that the Black Friday opening sequence of Thanksgiving worked best in that movie and tried to graft it onto this film’s premise.
The double-edged sword to all of this is that there also isn’t anything to invest in here, which especially becomes an unforgivable issue during that third act that can’t help itself from flashing back to an origin story for the Ice Cream Man, sucking out the momentum. That is followed up by some nonsensical lore on how to kill him, which is also a bummer, considering the flat and unrewarding ending (it’s more about a sick punchline rather than a cathartic victory, compared to, say, Weapons). Much like the ice cream itself, the moments of outrageously grisly fun in Ice Cream Man unfortunately dry up.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
