{"id":5446,"date":"2026-08-04T04:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T04:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5446"},"modified":"2026-08-04T04:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T04:36:17","slug":"ice-cream-man-review-eli-roths-children-of-the-damned-splatter-movie-is-no-treat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5446","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ice Cream Man\u2019 Review: Eli Roth\u2019s Children-of-the-Damned Splatter Movie Is No Treat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tHorror-movie directors are always looking for new ways to transgress. Eli Roth is a prime example \u2014 he once transgressed brilliantly, in \u201cHostel: Part II\u201d (an eerily plausible movie about members of the elite paying huge sums to murder people in a warehouse in Slovakia), and he did it in an impish way in \u201cThanksgiving,\u201d the holiday-horror expansion of his \u201cGrindhouse\u201d trailer. But with \u201cIce Cream Man,\u201d Roth tries to go \u201cover the line\u201d in a way that\u2019s shamelessly derivative, jaw-droppingly bare-bones basic as filmmaking, and way too ludicrous to scare you. The movie wants to be a lark, but it\u2019s such a preeningly garish and ham-handed piece of shock theater that it makes \u201cThanksgiving\u201d look like \u201cVampyr.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn the picturesque town of Bayleen Bay, a sunny Little League game is followed by the arrival of the ice-cream man (Ari Millen), who drives up in a blue-and-white truck heralded by his jingling-bell theme music (which sounds like Eddie Cochran\u2019s \u201cC\u2019mon Everybody\u201d). All the kids rush over to get ice cream. But this ice-cream man is a sinister psycho creep. In his pristine 1950s ice-cream-parlor hat and suit, flashing a grin under a sardine mustache, he\u2019s mute, like Art the Clown in the \u201cTerrifier\u201d films, and he gives off the pervy vibe of the shoe-store clerk in ZZ Top\u2019s \u201cLegs\u201d video.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs he a mad killer? No, he\u2019s a pied piper, handing out demonically possessed ice-cream cones (the flavors advertised on his truck have names like Locust Lick and Serpent Swirl) that turn the local middle schoolers into slasher zombies who kill every teacher and parent in sight. It\u2019s a \u201cVillage of the Damned\u201d meets \u201cWeapons\u201d meets the opening scene of \u201cHalloween\u201d situation. But those movies all tower over \u201cIce Cream Man,\u201d a one-joke piece of hyped-up kiddie zombie splatter schlock.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe know the kids have become a killer cult when they start skulking around with blue and chocolate ice-cream smears (with sprinkles!) around their mouths, as if they had just barfed up a double-scoop cone. Then they go on the attack. The first murder is a girl slicing into her slumbering mother\u2019s neck with a hacksaw; then her brother pounds his father\u2019s face in with a baseball bat. Roth himself plays the hero\u2019s geek dad, who will get his just desserts. As the rampage ramps up, assorted tools and weapons are employed: an electric sander, a garden shears, a garbage disposal, a fishbowl, a baggie, bricks tossed from a rooftop \u2014\u00a0Roth\u2019s slaughteriffic imagination is very analog suburban. And let\u2019s not forget that old favorite: falling over backwards on a ladder and getting your face reduced to jelly by having it bashed in with a fire extinguisher. At one point the ice-cream man hands a girl a scoop, which juts out a blade, which she uses to saw the top of a teacher\u2019s head off and then scoop out his brains and feed it to him. Fun!<\/p>\n

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\n\tI share the nostalgic affection, and even admiration, that people have these days for practical effects, but there\u2019s a way that the reverence for them can be overstated. The use of practical effects in \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d\u00a0 is talked about in awed tones, as if it made up for the film\u2019s storytelling lapses, and in \u201cIce Cream Man\u201d Eli Roth\u2019s obsession with decapitations and disembowelings and severed body parts \u2014 some of this is done practically, some digitally \u2014\u00a0is a thin step up from the carny-barker grisliness of Herschell Gordon Lewis. At the film\u2019s frenzied climax, children jump rope on the playground using an intestine, and they play tetherball with a chain attached to a severed head. I\u2019ve praised the \u201cTerrifier\u201d films for what may sound like the same thing, but the director of those movies, Damien Leone, uses practical effects to create escalating arias of gore. And Art the Clown\u2019s mime-of-mayhem harlequin ghoulishness is part of the extremity. Since kids aren\u2019t naturally aggressive in that way, seeing them become insane slashers is off-putting, in part because it feels so fake.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat \u201cIce Cream Man\u201d comes down to, after a while, is an army of teen actors glowering in zombie ice-cream-barf makeup. The idiot-stooge middle-school teachers keep getting it, which gives the movie a musty we\u2019re-not-gonna-take-it \u201canti-establishment\u201d vibe that\u2019s very 1980s. And the film\u2019s cheesy, functional, overbright look feeds right into that.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are three kids who aren\u2019t infected, led by Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), the shrimpy geek who\u2019s lactose intolerant (so he can\u2019t have ice cream). They escape the madness just in time to land in a freezer, where a dour priest (Benjamin Byron Davis) explains the ice-cream man\u2019s backstory. It has something to do with a Catholic child-sex-abuse scandal and his being unfairly blamed for it, an origin saga so preposterous it would make Freddy Krueger groan. (My favorite part: the ice-cream man showing up in court\u2026in his ice-cream-man suit.) That the film knows<\/em> it\u2019s preposterous is supposed to be redeeming. But Roth\u2019s it\u2019s-all-a-big-joke attitude here is a cop-out that\u2019s beneath him, a way to avoid making a horror movie that truly engages us. With a slight nudge, \u201cIce Cream Man\u201d could be a \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d horror trailer. The Grindhouse might turn it down.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\u2018Ice Cream Man\u2019 Review: Eli Roth\u2019s Children-of-the-Damned Splatter Movie Is No Treat<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed online, Aug. 1, 2026. Running time: 86 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \nA The Horror Section release of an MCT Studios production, in association with Sixth Dimension, Head Gear Films, Metrol Technology, Mass Appeal, Dentsu. Producers: Eli Roth, Kate Harrison Karmen, Christopher Woodrow, Raj B. Singh. Executive producers: Jon Schnaars, Holly Adams, Kevin Frakes, Nasir Jones, Peter Bittenbender, Matt MacLellan, Andre Coutu, Connor DiGregorio, Eli Massillon, Lorenzo Antonucci, Ash Avildsen, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Jeremy Ross, Geneva Wasserman, Feng Ren, David Edwards.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector: Eli Roth. Screenplay: Eli Roth, Noah Belson. Camera: Simon Shohet. Editor: Matt Lyon. Music: Brandon Roberts, Snoop Dogg.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nAri Miller, Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O\u2019Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, Benjamin Byron Davis, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco, Eli Roth, Lorenzo Antonucci, Luke Dietz, Eli Massillone. \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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