An idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results.
If you are familiar with filmmaker Eli Roth, then you know he is known for making extremely gory horror films. Some of his movies, “Cabin Fever,” “Hostel,” “Hostel: Part II,” “The Green Inferno,” and “Thanksgiving,” are all bloodbaths, filled with all sorts of gruesome deaths: dismemberments, decapitations, bludgeonings, disembowelments, strangulations, castrations, and the list goes on. If horror is not your cup of tea, then I strongly advise you to stay away from anything Eli Roth-directed.
His latest film, “Ice Cream Man,” might share the same name as the 1995 movie starring Clint Howard, but that’s where the similarities end. We are introduced to the small, sleepy coastal town of Bayleen Bay. Here, kids play baseball, the parents cheer them on from the bleachers, everyone knows everyone, and it is the perfect small town for families who want to avoid the hustle and bustle of any major city.
That is, until one day, a mysterious ice cream man appears. He pulls in after a baseball game and offers free ice cream to all the town kids. They lap it up, going back for seconds and thirds, except for a few kids who feel weirded out by him. They choose not to eat the ice cream, and then he leaves. But during the night, he returns, driving up and down the streets, playing his ice cream song, awakening all the children who ate his sweet treats earlier in the day, the tune forcing them to slaughter all of their parents. The next day, a group of kids, consisting of Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman), Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly), and Jared’s older sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), realize that they are the only ones not affected, as the rest of the town kids walk around like zombies, killing any remaining adults.
When the kids come after them, they manage to hide in the local church basement, where they meet a priest (Benjamin Byron Davis), who is also hiding out. He informs them that many years ago, the ice cream man loved to make all the town children happy by giving them free treats but when it was discovered that a local priest had done bad things to a young boy, instead of holding him accountable, the town came together and decided to blame the ice cream man instead, an outsider, forcing all the kids to lie and point their fingers at him. In jail, he was visited by a necromancer and offered his soul so he could get revenge against the town and its people.
With time running out, the priest tells the children that the necromancer is buried in a shallow, unmarked grave near the lake and that they must dig him up and destroy the body. As they reach the burial site, they are confronted by the chilling sight of the infected children rapidly closing in. Jared and his friends realize that it is up to them to destroy the necromancer’s body and free all the children from his spell, but they must act quickly, knowing that failure will condemn them to the same twisted fate as the others.
The storyline for “Ice Cream Man” feels like an afterthought, almost as if Roth prioritized filming his signature grisly murders before adding a narrative and backstory just to make it feel more like a real film and less like a string of killings. The movie is filled with Roth’s trademark carnage and some of the scenes are so over-the-top, you can’t help but laugh at them. But others are disturbingly convincing. The film’s first decapitation of a mother in her bed is rendered with a level of graphic realism rarely seen in recent cinema. Adults get sawed in half, and one, in particular, takes a page out of Ridley Scott’s dinner table scene in “Hannibal” with Ray Liotta (if you know you know).
The young actors do a serviceable job in their respective roles, yet Roth skillfully employs misdirection—particularly in the movie’s final act—leaving viewers genuinely unsettled. There will undoubtedly be comparisons to Zach Cregger’s box-office and critical hit, “Weapons,” and even more so with the 2014 dark comedy horror, “Cooties,” starring Elijah Wood, but “Ice Cream Man” confidently distinguishes itself, embracing its own brand of violence and unrestrained savagery.
This feels more like a film you’d find on a streaming service, so its initial theatrical release comes as a welcome surprise, and that will allow you to experience its grisly spectacle as it was meant to be seen: on the big screen. If you’re an Eli Roth fan, or a horror hound, you’ll most certainly enjoy “Ice Cream Man.”
In Theaters Friday, August 7th
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