Forget the flavours in the van, Ice Cream Man is a giant playbox for Eli Roth to play around in. Day of the Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Hannibal and more all get nods in this dedicated run of non-stop, brutal gore.
But as he establishes his new media company, The Horror Section, the director who broke through with Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005) serves up something that feels just as indulgent as lacking in any nutritional value.
Lactose intolerance is the saving grace for 12-year-old Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) when, after another miserable game of baseball, all the other kids swoop on the ice cream van where the strangely silent ice cream man serves up flavours like Billy Goat Bar and Locust Lick.
Come the night, when all the kids are tucked up in bed, the tinny music of the ice cream van rolling down suburban lanes turns them into homicidal zombies, massacring any adult in sight. Barely escaping zombification, it’s down to Jared, big sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), and some other kids to form an anti-whip Goonies to escape and then take down the demonic lolly vendor.
Oof, it’s one of those high-but-simple concepts that you have hopes for in Roth’s hands, but it’s a step back from the satirical slashing of 2023’s Thanksgiving. There’s an undeniable glee seeing the corruption of the sweet and innocent—there’s a lot of tiny kids making inventive use of circular saws, goldfish bowls and anything else they can find to massacre adults. In between that non-stop neck-severing and face-cratering, there’s that Midwich Cuckoos side too (with the haunted zombie makeup created by the smear of cream and sprinkles effectively hinting at Romero classics at times). But while there’s always room for a new spin on an inherently sinister tale of the Pied Piper (and ice cream vans look suitably creepy at night) in a post-Weapons world, Ice Cream Man is horrifyingly unsophisticated.
There’s nothing wrong with the shiny sheen of the picture per se—this is a film all about confection after all—but it really exposes a lack of depth.
Worse of all, Ice Cream Man’s third act takes the non-stop references to horror films a step too far. It’s hard to explain how ham-fisted the rush to triple-scoop in a preposterous origin for the evil ice cream man is—let’s just say that it has more than a bit in common with Halloween 6 – The Curse of Michael Myers. The ‘twist’ is so laboured and obvious it leaves a terrible aftertaste for all the wrong reasons.
Considering that, the cast of kids, particularly Zeltzer, do remarkably well. As Lizzie’s ex-boyfriend, Dylan Hawco’s Chris is a welcome bit of comic relief, but he struggles against the heightened nonsense of the constant head-pulverising. Coming off worst, unbelievably, is Ari Millen as the Ice Cream Man. He has so little to do that the main villain tag falls to the cone-and-cream mascot on top of his van, with its black teeth a mesh of tannoy.
One early scene, where Jared’s family sits around a dinner table early on (with Roth as patriarch—chewing the table a bit), has the hint of improvisation. If only it could have crept into the rest of the film. Here’s hoping The Horror Section gets back to fresh ideas, like the irrepressible Jimmy and Stiggs that Roth had the vision to pick up last year.
Ice Cream Man’s derivative ’80s-tinged swirl of intoxication is only matched by its rapid unravelling. At best, it feels like part of an anthology. It’s not gritty or gnarly enough to be The Terrifier. It’s too glib and horror-illogical to be Weapons. A low-budget horror served to cinemas with a dose of unfortunate AI controversy; even at 80 minutes during a heat wave, it overstays its welcome.
Ice Cream Man is in cinemas now.
