Eli Roth has never been a filmmaker I’ve felt compelled to defend. He’s a provocateur whose work often lives or dies by how much you’re willing to embrace outrageous violence, juvenile humour and unapologetic excess. At his best, films like Cabin Fever, Hostel and Thanksgiving understood the particular corner of horror they occupied, balancing their brutality with a strong enough premise or satirical edge to justify the carnage. Ice Cream Man has none of that. It’s an ugly, joyless exercise in escalation that mistakes relentless gore for entertainment and ultimately becomes one of the weakest films Roth has ever put his name to.
The premise is undeniably intriguing. A mysterious ice cream vendor arrives in a quiet suburban town, luring children with free treats before they begin turning violently against the adults around them. It’s the kind of concept that could have supported an unsettling mystery or a genuinely disturbing morality tale. Instead, Roth treats it as little more than an excuse to string together increasingly grotesque set pieces, offering almost nothing beneath the surface once the initial shock wears off.
For much of its brief running time, Ice Cream Man feels less like a story than a collection of rejected death scenes from Roth’s earlier films awkwardly stitched together. Every few minutes another adult is dispatched in some elaborately sadistic fashion, each kill attempting to outdo the last in terms of brutality. There’s no suspense because the film has no interest in building tension, only anticipation over what revolting image will come next. By the halfway point, the formula becomes painfully repetitive, making an 86-minute film feel considerably longer.
One sequence involving an ice cream scoop and a victim’s exposed brain is particularly stomach-turning, not because it’s frightening, but because it feels designed purely to provoke disgust. Gore can absolutely have a place in horror. Some of my favourite genre films revel in bloodshed and mean-spirited mayhem. But the violence still needs purpose, whether it’s serving the story, developing character or simply delivering an exhilarating sense of chaos. Here, it’s empty spectacle. The adults are barely characterised before they’re butchered, leaving the audience with little reason to care beyond morbid curiosity.
That lack of substance infects every aspect of the film. The screenplay is dreadful, filled with flat dialogue, nonsensical character decisions and performances that never rise above the material. It’s difficult to blame much of the cast when they’re saddled with such lifeless writing, but no one emerges particularly well. The titular Ice Cream Man himself (played by a silent Ari Millen) desperately wants to occupy the same cultural space as Terrifer‘s Art the Clown, yet never develops the charisma, menace or twisted personality required to become an iconic horror villain. He’s all image and no identity.
The film’s internal logic fares no better. Characters repeatedly make baffling decisions simply to facilitate another grisly death. One mother, having already witnessed her son brutally murder his own father, still refuses to defend herself when confronted by him moments later. Horror has always relied on heightened behaviour, but there’s a difference between panic-induced mistakes and characters behaving with astonishing stupidity because the screenplay demands it.
Perhaps most disappointing is how little interest Ice Cream Man has in exploring its own mythology. The film teases intriguing-enough questions surrounding the mysterious vendor before rushing through a backstory in its closing minutes. Rather than adding emotional weight or recontextualising the horror, the explanation feels hurried, underdeveloped and entirely unearned. Likewise, the ending can’t decide whether it wants to leave audiences devastated or chuckling through bleak black comedy, resulting in a finale that lands somewhere awkwardly in between.
Then there’s Roth’s decision to incorporate generative AI into the filmmaking process, reportedly citing budgetary limitations despite working with an estimated US$5 million production budget. It’s a frustrating contradiction. The film’s practical effects are, without question, its strongest asset. The makeup artists and prosthetics teams deliver gruesomely convincing work throughout, proving exactly what skilled craftspeople can achieve. That makes the reliance on AI for supplementary sequences feel all the more unnecessary and creatively disappointing, particularly in a genre that has long celebrated practical artistry.
Ironically, those practical effects are the only reason Ice Cream Man avoids the lowest possible rating. The craftsmanship behind the gore deserves recognition, even if everything surrounding it does not. But no amount of impressive prosthetic work can compensate for a film devoid of compelling characters, coherent storytelling or anything meaningful to say beyond finding new ways to mutilate its cast.
I’ve happily embraced excessive horror before, and I’ll happily do so again when it’s in service of a filmmaker with something to say or a story worth telling. Ice Cream Man has neither. It’s an exhausting parade of cruelty masquerading as entertainment, a film so obsessed with topping its last kill that it forgets to give audiences a reason to care about anything else.
HALF A STAR (OUT OF FIVE)
Ice Cream Man is now screening in Australian theatres.
