Ice Cream Man Review: Kids hacking up adults in graphically disturbing ways for shock value? Sounds like Eli Roth is back in horror mode.
Roth has always set out to disturb from the icky skin-eating virus of Cabin Fever to the torture porn of Hostel. Now he finds glee in kids creating the carnage with Ice Cream Man.
It seems like it’s going to be another idyllic summer in Bayleen Bay, until a mysterious ice cream van rolls into town.
After a little league baseball game on a warm day, the kids line up for a refreshingly icey treat, except meek and perpetually bullied Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) who passes on the ice cream due to his dairy intolerance.
But that night, the kids that did indulge turn zombie-like and wreak havoc on the adults, turning the Leave it to Beaver-looking town into a war zone in mere hours.
Ice Cream Man Review: A Boundary-Pushing Horror Throwback
Ice Cream Man is an 80-minute carousel of nasty carnage, vile mutilations and disturbing imagery, which for some, is the drawcard.
Even the most hardened and desensitised horror fan in these post-Terrifier times will watch in awe and surprise at just how far Roth pushes the limits.
Just try not to react to a child viciously scooping a brain out of a man’s skull and force-feeding it to him in relentless close-ups.
This will certainly be satisfying for gore fans who appreciate the effort and artistry of practical effects, which this does have plenty of.
Every dismembered limb, decapitated head, intestine used as skipping rope and demolished face is a gloriously low-grade, not derogatory, prosthetic creation.
Roth does lose significant points for the use of generative AI, which he openly admitted to, to assist in the creation of his film, which is a slap in the face to his audience and those practical effects.
More marks against him are for the flippant use of pre-teen bulimia and lynching for cheap jokes and shock value. Yikes.
Sometimes one can take things too far.
There are some clever touches, the bar is incredibly low: a dietary requirement saving a life, deaths by various school and ice cream paraphernalia and let’s be honest, there is some fun to be had in seeing pre-teens slash, hack, gouge and saw adults to death.
Ice Cream Man is a throwback to the nasty, substance-free, straight-to-video gorefests that lined video store shelves in the 80s and had conservatives protesting their existence.
But are the cringey one-liners and their equally shudder-inducing delivery by an amateur cast on purpose as part of that homage or simply a lack of talent in front of and behind the camera?
It is hard to pinpoint because Roth isn’t as sophisticated a filmmaker as some of his horror peers and this is presented as just as artless and unsophisticated as the films it was inspired by.
Come for the carnage but a repeat visit for a sweet treat is unlikely for this boundary-pushing butchery.
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Score: 6/10
