Icky Ice Cream

Note before the review: It has emerged that generative AI featured in the making of Ice Cream Man and the filmmakers appear to have been less than 100% honest with how much it was used. I have reviewed the film as I saw it and have not taken the way it was made into account. If you (understandably) want nothing to do with a movie that used generative AI then give this one a miss.

"The kids have gone fucking insane" screams a father just before his son and daughter, having already mangled his hand in the garbage disposal, set fire to him. How you feel about the idea of that scene pretty much tells you what you will think about the whole of Ice Cream Man, the latest bloodstained offering from gore hound Eli Roth.

The premise is a basic one: a quite overtly sinister ice cream man comes to town and, the day after he hands out his freezer based treats, any child who consumed them turns into little murder bots and begin dismembering the local adults. A couple of kids who didn't eat the icy offerings band together to try and bring an end to the mayhem.

Despite some gruesome killings, including someone having their own brains fed to them with an ice cream scoop, this isn't one of Roth's nastier movies. There is a wink and a nudge to the violence that puts it closer to his last film, Thanksgiving, than earlier works like Hostel or Cabin Fever. The kids battling evil in a small town narrative is reminiscent of a Stephen King set-up although the writing obviously falls infinitely short of that author's best work. That said, the film is a darn sight more entertaining than any of the turgid Children of the Corn films, with which it shares a killer kid premise.

The film manages to get a bit of humour out of the juxtaposition of the almost Amblin-style kids' adventure, featuring baseball games, school bullies and bicycle riding, and the schlocky mass murder. There is an element of slapstick to the violence that will get a chuckle out of some and one genuinely good gag about the convoluted rules that have to be followed in order to dispose of the villainous vender. The other written jokes don't fare as well, unless you find the idea of a twelve year old girl throwing up after eating because that's what twelve year old girls do hilarious.

And that's about that, the kids are entertaining enough in their roles (particularly Charlie Seltzer as lead Jared) and they run around trying not to get killed or force fed ice cream. Roth isn't looking at the food industry, or children's relationship with their parents or anything like that. He is here to use a simple premise to deliver a simple film with some fun kills and a scoop of lowbrow humour and if that is what you are looking for, Ice Cream Man gets the job done.

6 perplexed teachers out of 10.

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