Reviews For The Easily Distracted: Ice Cream Man

Title: Ice Cream Man

Describe This Movie In One The Warriors Quote:
AJAX: I’ll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a Popsicle.

Brief Plot Synopsis: Have you considered reading a good book this weekend?

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: One-half a Bomb Pop you found mostly melted on the Coney Island boardwalk out of 5.

Tagline: “We all scream.”

Better Tagline: “Or yawn.”

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Bayleen Bay is a idyllic town, and a long summer stretches ahead for young Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) and his big sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott). Fortunately, things are about to be livened up by the arrival of an Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen), who’s got a macabre mishmash of … yeah, never mind.

“Critical” Analysis: For better or worse, Eli Roth is a pretty significant figure in the firmament of modern horror cinema. As one of the progenitors of the early ’00s rise of so-called “torture porn” (the Hostel movies, The Green Inferno), his influence isn’t in dispute. Subject to more debate is whether or not said influence is a Good Thing.

Example: Cabin Fever, his debut film, was a huge hit for Lionsgate and earned Roth decent critical returns. Thanksgiving, a feature-length realization of the joke trailer he shot for Grindhouse, also received decent notices. Other stuff, like The Green Inferno and his (non-horror) remake of Death Wish, not so much.

But what all Roth’s movies betray is a willingness to go to often laughable extremes in gore and a lack of subtlety (to put it charitably) in their messaging. It doesn’t help that his characters are often shallow and unsympathetic, his dialogue leans way to hard into faux edgy, and his “shock for shock’s sake” approach gets wearying.

I offer this somewhat sympathetic career analysis as contrast to the fact that Ice Cream Man may be the worst movie of the year.

Neither a remake of the Clint Howard 1996 film nor a dramatization of that Van Halen song, Roth says he intended for his latest to be the Saving Private Ryan of splatter movies. A statement that makes me wonder if he’s ever seen it. The violence in SPR is harrowing, realistic, and — I’d argue — necessary. The copious blood and guts in Ice Cream Man are occasionally amusing, then eventually numbing.

If the movie was merely dull, that’d be one thing. Unfortunately, Ice Cream Man emphasizes Roth’s inexplicable* need to traffic in humor that’s been cringe since the Clinton Administration. Have you missed the R-word? How about jokes about a 12-year old’s bulimia? Ever wanted to watch a girl fellate a toothbrush in order to make herself puke? Well, maybe this is the movie for you. Granted, that’s all pretty tame compared to a scene where a black man gets dragged behind a truck. Here in the year of our lord 2026.

And let’s not even talk about the shitty “homage” to The Birds. Or how the plot resurrects the plot of A Nightmare on Elm Street while somehow making it even more ridiculous.

Then there’s the AI. Roth has admitted to using it for “a very small portion” of the movie after initially lying about its inclusion. I don’t know if Roth isn’t reading the room on the subject, or if he simply doesn’t care. Either way, it ain’t a good look. Bill Hicks had a bit about how if an artist ever did a commercial, they should be “off the roll call” forever. That obviously hasn’t happened, but what do we do with directors who use AI and then lie about it? If you aren’t going to actually do the work, why not just retire? I think we all know the answer to that, but I had to ask.

Eli Roth has always styled himself as some kind of transgressive horror figure. He’s not. Pulling out loops of intestines doesn’t make you Kōji Shiraishi, any more than occasional body horror makes you Julia Ducournau. David Cronenberg, Takashi Miike, Gaspar Noé or Marian Dora could all come up with more disturbing and thought-provoking movies while napping in front of the Golf Channel.

Meanwhile, Roth thinks sawing a head off is somehow groundbreaking. No doubt, he’ll point to Ice Cream Man’s shitty box office and abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score as proof that mainstream audiences and critics somehow don’t “get” him. The truth is, he’s a boring horror director (his best movie is The House With a Clock in Its Walls). I will admit to liking Thanksgiving, which had a similarly bleak worldview, but still managed to be intermittently entertaining.

No such charge can be leveled against Ice Cream Man. This is merely an unpleasant slog with only the haziest outlines of a “story” to justify the viscera and AI slop. After this sinks like a stone, look for Hostel 3 in theaters next summer.

*Especially for a 54-year old grown-ass man.

Ice Cream Man is in theaters today.