Ice Cream Man (2026) Review

From the demented mind of Eli Roth is a darkly comic gore fest that sees a small town of children turned into a ravenous mob of murderers.

In a small picturesque New England town, a strange ice cream man (Ari Millen) appears and becomes a hit with the children. However, all the children who have eaten the ice cream become possessed and kill any nearby adults when they hear the Ice Cream Man’s jingle. At the elementary school, only three kids, Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman), and Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly), haven’t eaten the ice cream. They must survive the onslaught and find a way to defeat the Ice Cream Man.

Ice Cream Man had an excellent trailer that made it look like a piece of gory B-movie schlock. It seemed like it would be fun. His previous film, the seasonal slasher Thanksgiving, was entertaining as it made the best use of the American holiday. However, the critical reaction has been terrible: it has a 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and horror websites like Horror Press and Heaven Horror have been negative. I saw it at a Scream Unseen screening, and there were a few walkouts, and when the film finished, a bloke behind me just said: “terrible.” It was a step back for Roth.

The plot of Ice Cream Man was thinner than tissue paper: it was just an excuse to have shocking scenes and images of kids doing violent acts. It was an over-the-top affair where children did some really vile things to the point I was thinking, why did the parents of the child actors allow them to be in this film? There were young children who were performing acts like amputation and disembowelling. In other films that have killer children, their violent acts are normally off-screen, use creative editing, or cast older children. Ice Cream Man earned an 18 rating in the UK, but it was an immature film.

Ice Cream Man had a similar premise to Weapons since they were both Pied Piper-inspired stories. Weapons was an elevated horror film that had a Rashomon-style story structure that slowly revealed information. Weapons had a cathartic yet bitter ending, which showed possessed children getting their revenge. Ice Cream Man aimed to be a grindhouse experience where audiences could get some sadistic glee from all the death. Some critics have said Roth just copied Weapons, but in reality, it’s a coincidence because Ice Cream Man was filming around the time Weapons was released.

The story of the film Ice Cream Man can be described as the final act of Weapons turned into a film, or the Pee-wee baseball team robbery scene in Robocop 2 stretched to feature length. To show how little story there was in the film, important information was only revealed at the start of the third act, resulting in this being the only time the film had more drive than to survive the zombie kids. Ice Cream Man was based on a premise so flimsy that it collapsed during the third act.

Ice Cream Man can be seen as the 2020s equivalent of Maximum Overdrive. Both were films with a poor critical reputation that shared a dark sense of humour. Maximum Overdrive was about a group of people that was held under siege by demonic trucks, whilst most of Ice Cream Man was about the trio of children who had to go from room to room in their school to avoid the horde.

There was also a little of the Terrifier films in Ice Cream Man. They were all horror films built on shock value, and The Ice Cream Man was modelled on the killer clown. The Ice Cream Man was a silent character, and Ari Millen was incredibly expressive in the villainous role. Ice Cream Man was a mean-spirited film, but it was more tolerable than Terrifier 3.

There were some of Roth’s usual tropes in Ice Cream Man. Nearly everyone in the film was an arsehole so audiences can root for their death, and excessive gore has been one of Roth’s trademarks. There were also moments of dark humour, but some of them were uncomfortable. Most notable was that Mia didn’t get possessed because she made herself sick, and she said: “I’m a 12-year-old girl, of course I know how to do that.” It’s a film that made light of an eating disorder. Due to the film having a more tongue-in-cheek approach, I had more fun with it than overly serious and mediocre films like Tarot and Whistle.

Maximum Overload did become a cult classic because it can be seen as a “so bad it’s good experience,” and the novelty that it was the only film directed by Stephen King. Ice Cream Man could gain a similar status, but it does have one big black mark against it: the use of generative AI. Roth partnered with the AI visual effects company Dark Half, and they were used to “assist” with the belief animation sequences which the possessed children saw. When Ice Cream Man had CGI effects, they were of poor quality. Roth made himself look like a hack using this technology when he could have hired professional artists. The only positive from this ‘experiment’ was proving that generative AI shouldn’t be used in feature films.

Ice Cream Man was a film that had a single premise, milked it dry, and kept going. There was some entertainment value from the carnage, but there was nothing to sustain it.