It doesn’t take long before the upbeat and knowingly cheesy veneer of “Ice Cream Man” dissolves into a fount of blood. That’s to be expected from a movie written and directed by horror enfant terrible Eli Roth, re-energized after the commercial and critical success of his undemanding slasher crowd-pleaser “Thanksgiving.” “Ice Cream Man” dispenses with most of that recent programmer’s formalities to deliver an even higher-concept body count flick. We follow a group of children as they struggle to thwart the title menace (Ari Millen), an irredeemably evil Pied Piper of Hamlin type, from leading the rest of their town’s kids on a murderous rampage. Mouse traps, power and gardening tools, baseball bats and balls, too—it’s all fair game in Roth’s latest splatter flick. And to be honest, it’s mostly pretty satisfying, even if there’s ultimately nothing surprising or essential here.
Even underwhelming scenes, many of which strain to either annoy or trigger viewers, seem authentic enough in their degenerate impulses, from their expletive-filled adolescent banter to Roth’s glaring use of AI-generated art. The filmmaker’s undisguised glee in being so gross and free ultimately makes this low-stakes exercise in bad taste a fun enough time-waster, even if you’ll likely forget the nutritionally empty “Ice Cream Man” soon after inhaling it.
Following a still cresting wave of Stephen King adaptations and homages, “Ice Cream Man” sometimes feels like a surreal and proudly bratty trend-chaser in the same way that “Piranha 3-D” was a proudly crass tribute to the original 1978 “Jaws”-sploitation potboiler “Piranha” and Spielberg-sploitation in general. “Piranha 3-D” was initially celebrated by some genre aficionados for its gruesome practical effects and its creators’ refreshingly straight-ahead sadism. Sure, there are some good guys to root for in both “Ice Cream Man” and “Piranha 3-D,” but there’s also much less time wasted developing them instead of what audiences likely came to see: graphic, gasp-inducing gore. What gives “Ice Cream Man” a slight edge is also what makes it so exasperating, namely that Roth seems more desperate to unnerve you, even if he doesn’t always have the stamina needed to do it.
The plot’s a bit thin, even if that’s obviously not the reason to see “Ice Cream Man.” Misfit preteen Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) fights to escape a mob of killer school children, all of whom seem to have turned evil after gorging on mind-controlling frozen treats. Jared then teams up with his teenage crush Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman) and his pouty older sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott). And true to Rothian form, the gang even makes fairweather allies of their former tormentors, like Jared’s bike-stealing bully Sebastian (Sonam Kalsang) and Lizzie’s egotistical airhead ex Chris (Dylan Hawco). Doesn’t matter if you’re naughty or nice, everybody gets hacked, slashed, and gouged in the end.
What makes Roth the ideal candidate for a project as sugary and pre-masticated as “Ice Cream Man” is his typical zeal for creating un-safe spaces that don’t subvert as much as they prey on viewers’ expectations. For example, it’s not surprising that one main character calls the other a “retard,” but it is amusing to see Roth show his age when his disposable victims brandish the latest juvenile putdown (“a touch of the ‘tism”). “Ice Cream Man” delivers a lot of the essential goods, in that sense, mostly because you don’t have to squint too hard to feel the filmmakers’ animating joy at being so unpleasant.
You might think that watching dead-eyed kids mutilate and butcher everyone around them would become exhausting, and that’s sometimes true. But while the movie’s anticlimactic finale is effectively oppressive, it’s also contrived enough to make you wish that Roth and the gang kept going. Before then, a number of scenes appear id-driven and rough enough around the edges to make “Ice Cream Man” seem authentically reckless. But once all is revealed, Roth and the gang remind us that their latest offering was only ever meant to be a trifle, making its shaggy dog ending both an appropriate capper and a frustrating reflection of the movie’s over-reliance on cheap thrills.
To be fair, Roth’s movie rarely suggests that there’s more to “Ice Cream Man” than what’s on offer. It’s still weird to feel so let down when the filmmakers inevitably let the air out of their proverbial tires. Fast and mean is one thing, but by the time we creep up to the finish line, you can’t help but wonder: Is that it? Instead of committing to the grisly bit, escalating steadily until we reach a squirm-inducing breakthrough, Roth sort of grinds up to a generic precipice and then lets a combination of gravity and no brakes take over. So while “Ice Cream Man” flames out well enough, it never presses its luck hard enough to leave a memorably nasty wreck.
