Ice Cream Man (2026) Review

Imagine it’s 1978, and you’re in the cinema with a pal, watching John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween,’ say. Afterwards, your buddy has an accident, and is thrust into a coma for 30 years. They wake up in 2016, with a surprisingly robust bit of brain power left. The next ten years your friend spends regaining the ability to eat, breathe, speak, etc. They make remarkable progress, finally getting back to some semblance of normality.

It’s then 2026, and doctors decide you can bring your now grey-haired mate to the cinema. They haven’t seen any kind of film in many a year, let alone a horror. You decide on Eli Roth’s ‘Ice Cream Man.’ It looks like a bloody good time, after all. Your hypothetical friend- who missed forty-eight years of cinema, technological evolution and, one would hope, human progress- would still take one look at Roth’s film and know instantly that something, somewhere had gone horribly wrong. It is not an overstatement to say that ‘Ice Cream Man’ is so dire that even someone with the cognitive agility of a damp sponge would call it trash.

It is set in the suburban paradise of Bayleen Bay, after the mysterious titular character arrives in town, quickly becoming a hit with the local children. When the kids start behaving violently, lactose-intolerant teenager Jared Mayfair begins to suspect that there’s something sinister lurking beneath the truck’s cheerful exterior. Soon, Jared and his friends find themselves fighting for survival as their classmates turn on the adults of the town, leaving blood and sprinkles in their wake.

It’s a shockingly bad effort, that feels oddly old-fashioned, despite the fact that Roth’s narrative rips off recent films like ‘Weapons’ and ‘Terrifier’. Mundane and unfunny, it may be the worst thing Roth has ever directed- a hell of a statement considering he’s behind the ‘Borderlands’ movie, the 2018 ‘Death Wish’ remake and ‘Hostel Part II.’ A non-stop parade of tasteless violence and derivative plot points, it is a genuine slog to sit through.

Roth has seemingly thrown out every screenwriting convention in the book. In fact, it often feels like he’s deliberately trying to piss off his audience. So, what does he offer viewers? An original story? No, what would be the point? A protagonist you don’t want to punch? Who needs that? Any likeable characters whatsoever? Absolutely not, God forbid. His dialogue teeters between cringingly inane and pitifully stilted, while his characterisation is trite. Even his feeble attempt to inject a twist towards the end is rendered moot by the fact that nobody cares about any of his irritating characters, leaving it with all the impact of a feather landing in a lava flow.

The dialogue really is abhorrent. Jared, the cocky little nuisance, is incapable of going more than a few seconds without spouting some smart-arse quip, while his two friends are seemingly afflicted with the same condition. Never mind that the town is descending into homicidal chaos; apparently, somebody still needs to crack wise. It’s cheap, lousy writing, with Roth seemingly confusing obnoxiousness for personality.

At times, it feels as though he’s pandering to the comic-book crowd, loading the script with the sort of incessant quipping that might work for some in your average cookie-cutter superhero blockbuster. There’s just one problem: the sort of people who would enjoy that kind of thing are likely not the same that would be queuing up for an Eli Roth film in the first place. Damien Leone’s gorily over-the-top ‘Terrifier’ movies work precisely because they don’t pander to that kind of crowd, just as Zach Cregger’s ‘Weapons’ understood modern horror doesn’t need to be dumbed down.

The Godawful narrative becomes even more frustrating when considering Roth can be a very talented filmmaker. 2002’s ‘Cabin Fever’ was a nasty, darkly funny slab of horror, while the first ‘Hostel’ was, and still is, properly frightening. 2015’s ‘Knock Knock’ may be nowhere near as good as its 1977 inspiration ‘Death Game,’ but is by no means a bad film. In short, Roth knows perfectly well how to craft a decent horror, which makes his sheer ineptitude on display here all the more baffling.

Visually, ‘Ice Cream Man’ is at least effective enough, employing the classic suburban-horror trick of hiding the red ants beneath the cherry tree, to borrow David Lynch’s imagery: colourful, innocuous surroundings juxtaposed with barbarity. It’s hardly an original approach, but Roth and director of photography Simon Shohet occasionally make striking use of the contrast, with the cheery suburban setting providing an effective backdrop for bloodshed.

Brandon Roberts’ whimsical score is also effective for largely the same reasons, its playful quality creating an amusing contrast with the brutality on screen. The effects are similarly effective without being anything to write home about, with the violence generally well captured and realised for the screen. Roth knows how to stage bloodshed, and the gore has enough weight to make the nastier moments work, but there’s nothing here that will have seasoned horror fans reaching for the sick bag.

Matt Lyon’s editing, by contrast, is considerably more problematic, making the already short film drag. It’s an odd achievement for a film so brief to feel quite so long. Further, Roth has admitted to using generative AI in the film, although he has been conspicuously cagey about where and to what extent. He claims it wasn’t used during the brief flashes of the Fleischer Studios-inspired ice-cream cartoon, but this is particularly awkward given that he had previously claimed no AI was used at all. Quite where, and to what extent, it appears in the finished film therefore remains unclear.

It almost feels mean-spirited to criticise the young cast, considering the majority of them are under eighteen and saddled with an atrocious script; but to give them a complete pass would be disingenuous. Charlie Zeltzer’s central performance as Jared is gratingly smug and one-note, while Shiloh O'Reilly and Kiori Mirza Waldman fare little better as his two accomplices. Conversely, as Jared’s oldest sister Lizzie, Sarah Abbott does strong work, while Benjamin Byron Davis pops up very briefly and nearly steals the whole film.

Ultimately, despite the occasional effective visual, a decent bit of gore and a whimsical score, Eli Roth’s ‘Ice Cream Man’ is a distasteful slice of rubbish. Boasting some godawful writing, annoying characters and a wholly derivative narrative, it’s a miserable slog. It’s more likely you know someone who’s woken up from a forty-eight-year coma than you know anyone who could claim to have enjoyed it. Frankly, being comatose is preferable to watching it again.