"Ice Cream Man": Eli Roth Made a Film People Walk Out Of

What's the Film Even About

The plot is simple to the point of indecency. In a quiet American suburb, an ice cream vendor (Ari Millen) appears. He hands out treats to children, after which they transform into bloodthirsty maniacs and start butchering adults. That's it. That's the whole story of this film there's nothing more to it.

The first ten minutes even set you up for something interesting: a Stephen King style atmosphere of childhood dread, likable characters, intrigue around the strange ice cream man. But then begins what one viewer accurately called "the most brutal meat grinder" - and that meat lasts for almost the entire film.

What's Wrong Here?

1. There is no plot. It only shows up in the final 15 minutes, when the writers suddenly remember they need to explain something. Until then, you spend an hour and a half watching kids with ear to ear grins tear adults apart. It's not scary, and it's not disturbing - it's just boring and unpleasant.

2. Actors - or rather, the lack of them. You can see that mannequins are used instead of real people in many scenes. And this isn't an artistic choice. It's just cheap. And if you look at the acting itself, it's wooden, and the dialogue is so bad you want to cover your face with your hands. Even Eli Roth himself appears on screen, and it looks like an attempt to breathe some life into something already dead.

3. AI. This is a whole separate topic worth discussing at length. The credits list Dark Half, a company specializing in AI generated visual effects, and Roth later confirmed that artificial intelligence was indeed used and it really shows. Not in a "cheap looking" way, but in the sense that there's no soul in this film at all. The film feels like it was assembled from algorithmic pieces of prompts from ChatGPT: a bit of nostalgia, a bit of blood, a bit of horror. But none of it works together.

4. The violence. There's so much of it that it stops provoking any emotion. When someone's head gets ripped off or their guts pulled out every two minutes, you just stop reacting. During secret screenings, people actually walked out en masse, and some even vomited. But that doesn't mean the film is scary. It means it's disgusting.

Other issues. Critics are unanimous: the film is cheap, derivative, and tasteless. A Variety reviewer called it a "one joke piece of shock theater," while The Guardian labeled it "one of the year's worst horrors." IGN noted that Roth tried to make his own Terrifier or Weapons but fell short of both.

Eli Roth has always known how to balance horror and dark comedy. It worked in Thanksgiving, but in this film it doesn't work at all. The jokes are either unfunny or just plain inappropriate.

The Verdict

Ice Cream Man is not a horror film. It's a bloody attraction that tries to be trashy but gets stuck somewhere between bad taste and boredom. It doesn't scare, doesn't amuse, and doesn't make you think. It just exists - an hour and a half of screen time filled with mannequins, AI, and senseless violence.