What’s It About

An idyllic suburban town descends into madness when a mysterious ice cream man serves sweet treats that turn children into homicidal maniacs.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

The latest horror hit “Ice Cream Man” by Eli Roth takes place in the town of Bayleen Bay, where a stranger drives an ice cream truck to sell ice cream with names like Croc Chomp. After the kids eat the ice cream, they become cold-blooded and violent. They go berserk and attack their parents and teachers using whatever weapon they can find at that time. Twelve-year-old Jared, the main protagonist, doesn t eat the ice cream as he has a lactose intolerance problem, and this helps him to stay safe while the town goes mad. Jared teams up with two other untouched kids, Tommy, played by Shiloh O’Reilly, and Mia, played by Kiori Mirza Waldman. Sarah Abbott plays Lizzie, the elder sister who joins the battle after surviving her share of cursed desserts. The small group now needs to work together to find out who the Ice Cream Man is and find a way to stop him before Bayleen Bay is empty. Instead, the movie spends most of its runtime showing kids attack grown-ups with garbage disposals, baseball bats, and other household junk, then repeats that trick again and again until the shock wears thin. Horror movies love the idea of childhood innocence turning rotten, and Bayleen Bay gives that idea a real showcase, since Roth stages plenty of scenes with kids in school uniforms and little league jerseys covered in blood by the end. The trouble is that innocence only lands as a real loss when the audience first sees it as real. Jared and his crew aren t living life before all hell breaks loose, aside from playing baseball and having one breakfast together. Honestly, we never see them study, goof around after school, or have any trouble besides fighting monsters, so their battle to survive seems rather meaningless. A horror movie about corrupted childhood needs us to know what got corrupted in the first place, and this one rushes past that step to reach the next kill. That repetition of events actually shows us is a true predicament beneath all that blood: very few characters in this film have any chance to transform into human beings. Ari Millen plays the Ice Cream Man with practically no words to say and a strange fixed smile, so there is no way to say his acting is anything but creepy stranger with an ice cream scoop . He appears to be more like a sinister character than actual villain to study. The fate of most child actors is the same they receive weapons and are asked to yell, scream, and use their tools, but the script does not allow them to think or doubt. Zeltzer manages to find some freedom in playing Jared because the plot relies on him essentially, but his character behaves the same way as everybody else. Abbott shows some bright moments when Lizzie is scared and recovers from that, but the next chase scene prevents her from shining any longer. Eli Roth s fame emerged from the success of movies such as Cabin Fever” and “Hostel, wherein the director took his own sweet time creating suspense before starting the bloodshed. Unlike those films, Ice Cream Man takes things to the extreme and skips the whole slow build-up to gore, hoping that people can get away with it. There is another story about a priest hiding out inside a freezer that seems to justify the Ice Cream Man s evil deeds toward the end. However, this plot twist is a little too convenient it is obvious that it has been borrowed from a much more famous horror story. Most importantly, because the film doesn t have the buildup of any mystery regarding the Ice Cream Man in the first place, the whole reveal comes off as flat rather than thrilling. On the positive side, credit goes to the effective makeup and effects team for a gruesome crunch when the film chooses to go old-school instead of using CGI. Unfortunately, those moments get overshadowed by cheap digital bloodsplatter and some parts looking like they were made using Generative AI to create images, which turns the overall aesthetic into something resembling a corporate training video instead of a film with the social commentary of classic noirs. A movie that relies heavily on its number of kills needs to make every murder believable, but this movie fails at it all the way through. Roth tries out dark humor in this movie and every now and then it works, – especially in some of the little killings staged with techniques involving usual household items. Other jokes kind of suck, though, such as the embarrassing joke about people dealing with eating disorders. This kind of humor doesn’t really make one feel bold and risky, but lazy instead – it seems to be an easy way out, instead of the ingenious satire these talented people could create with the right script. By the time the credits roll, “Ice Cream Man” has poured all its energy into spectacle and left almost nothing behind for the people who made it happen. That’s a real shame, because a mysterious villain handing out cursed treats is a strong idea for a horror movie, and this cast clearly had more to offer than screaming, running, and swinging weapons. Roth doesn’t have faith in his cast enough to let them develop a character that audiences can connect with, thus giving us a series of horrifying deaths tied to a hero and a villain whose identities remain unknown until the end.

OUR RATING – A SOFT-SERVED 2