Eli Roth's Shoddy Shocker Is Just Empty Calories

Eli Roth‘s Ice Cream Man really got me thinking about the danger of references. This new horror movie isn’t very good – something I was initially inclined to forgive it for. Films like this overtly schlocky tale about ice cream that turns children into vicious murderers tend to make me a little self-conscious about having my critic brain turned on. Every time a line of dialogue makes me wince, or an act of violence doesn’t, there’s a little voice in the back of my head that says, So what? What did you expect, The Godfather?

But then, just as I’m about to try and look on the bright side, Roth will throw in an explicit reference to something like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, or George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, or Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. I’ll inevitably find myself thinking about those films and the creative visions that powered them, and how effective they were. Suddenly, the lack of imagination in Ice Cream Man‘s execution doesn’t seem so easily forgivable. Instead, it looks more and more like a wasted opportunity to make something interesting out of its fun idea.

Except In Moments, Ice Cream Man Is Goofy & Toothless

Even before the chaos begins, it’s apparent that Bayleen Bay isn’t quite as idyllic as it seems. The look of the town may be reminiscent of the classic ’50s image of suburban life, but the opening little league baseball game is full of kids swearing up a storm. For our protagonist, Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), the threat of bullying is pretty much constant. Under the pristine surface, there is a meanness to life here. So, it’s perhaps not surprising that when an unfamiliar ice cream man (Ari Millen) pulls up with his truck, Jared is a bit more suspicious than most of his fellow kids.

He’s also lactose intolerant, and so does not partake. But almost everyone else does. And that night, when the ice cream truck cruises through the neighborhood playing its usual jingle, something activates in them. With the joy of playing a game, they brutally murder their parents. The next day, when classrooms are filled with zombified kids with ice cream remnants around their mouths, Jared and a couple other unaffected classmates realize they’re in danger of being forced into the same fate. As adults are dismembered left and right, they must get to the bottom of what’s happening in their town.

Roth claims to have been nursing some version of this concept for 20 years, and I can understand why. The baseline taboo of children committing horrific acts of violence, let alone against their parents and teachers, contrasted with a seemingly idyllic backdrop has a lot of potential for visual creativity. That initial spark peeks through in moments when the affected kids play schoolyard games with the bodies (or body parts) of their victims. It’s just the right sick sense of humor Ice Cream Man needs.

Ice Cream Man is completely ineffective as a dramatic experience.

Unfortunately, those moments are relatively rare. Though the film is gleefully sadistic and doesn’t skimp on the gore, Roth fails to build any real tension around it. Most of the violence has a goofy weightlessness to it; Ice Cream Man is about as visceral as an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, and not nearly as cleverly staged. Without the right tone, there’s little chance of the movie making its intended impact. The further into the story I went, the less engaged I became.

The evil Ice Cream Man leading a bunch of zombified kids

It doesn’t help that Ice Cream Man is completely ineffective as a dramatic experience. Aside from the child protagonist, who I thought was capably performed, the script and cast alike make it very hard to care about any of these characters. None of the adults are believable as people. Ari Millen’s grinning ice cream man may cut a creepy figure, but as a villainous presence, he’s completely blank. Until the ending, which I have to say I did appreciate, any effort to ground the story in emotional stakes is half-hearted. I had nothing to invest in, aside from the execution of the kill scenes, which aren’t nearly successful enough to hang a whole movie on.

In this context, the homages were just frustrating echoes of better horror films, stripped of the things that made them impactful. Ice Cream Man plays like it’s trying to shock us without any of the filmmaking tools to achieve that result. It’s a fairly toothless, uninspired experience, especially considering what it could have been.

Ice Cream Man releases in theaters on Friday, August 7.