“Ice Cream Man” (2026) is Eli Roth’s latest film. A few days before summer break begins at Bayleen Bay, the titular vendor (Ari Millen, who resembles Sam Witwer) comes to town, and most of the kids eat the ice cream. They soon fall ill then wake up in the middle of the night to kill their parents. On the following day, only a handful of kids are acting normally while the other kids have mouths encrusted with dried ice cream and sprinkles with sunken, dark rimmed eyes and almost sleepwalking through life. Those unaffected kids soon connect the dots, but the adults are not so lucky. Why is the Ice Cream Man doing this? What does he want? Timing is everything, and Roth’s movie would hit harder if it did not come after “Weapons” (2025). Roth is rightfully more concerned with mayhem than story, but with a little sprucing up of the latter and making the characters less useless or slow, a huge swath of the middle act would not begin to feel monotonous, so the ending hits harder.
“Ice Cream Man” is neither a remake of the 1995 straight to video movie, nor related to “We All Scream for Ice Cream,” which is Season 2 Episode 10 of “Masters of Horror.” Roth has a keen understanding of horror and knows how to play with the horror tropes to create surprises. His story uses the familiar group of disparate kids who would not otherwise be friends as the ones to save the day with Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) as the head because he is the least cool, most bullied, smartest and most perspicacious. It is his chance to come out on top and maybe get the girl that the film implies that he likes, Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman). With the help of Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly), a kid with practical insight and appropriate rebelliousness, they seem to stand a chance at surviving. Teens who eat the ice cream have a different negative reaction to their younger counterparts so Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), Jared’s older sister, can elicit the help of her ex-boyfriend, Chris (Dylan Hawco), a landscaper trying to win her back.
If “Ice Cream Man” has a flaw, it is because Roth is too impatient to develop the story and wants to get to the gore. The diegetic sound of nature when the Ice Cream Man enters the town suggests normalcy then composer Brandon Roberts lays on the saccharine, idyllic music thick once the townspeople in the park are onscreen. The soundtrack tells the story of a town that has a perfect image about to be corrupted. It is over the top, but not obviously so. The townspeople are not perfect but endearing. All the children love to curse, and the parents are easy to like, especially Hank’s dad, Terry (Lorenzo Antonucci), who corrects his son in real time, or Jared and Lizzie’s parents, Alison (Karen Cliche) and Marty (Roth), who actually have dinner at the dining room table and enjoy their kids’ company. If more parents shared the spotlights, their deaths would have more impact, but for Roth, more is more, and he is impatient to get to dessert.
The slaughter in “Ice Cream Man” is inventive, merciless and maniacal. The children’s arrival at the school mimics some John Carpenter techniques in terms of composition of the mind-controlled kids and the unaffected before they mingle. Imagine a nightmarishly mischievous, playful, ear-splitting screaming kid, and you have some idea why calling this group zombies seem reductive, but if they are zombies, they are the fast kind, which is the worst. A movie like “The Brood” (1979) would prepare you to expect big damage from little packages. Unfortunately, because he unveils his best slaughter too early, even the goriest kill gets redundant. Any movie involving a lot of killing should list the murders then arrange then from least to most horrifying then arrange accordingly in the story, so the audience does not start tuning it out. There are only so many times that children can use intestines as playthings before it gets tiresome.
As it becomes more obvious that the children are the culprits, it felt as if Roth should have diversified the adults’ reaction, who were like sheep to the slaughter. His initial impulse to show parents reluctant to hurt their children was correct, but a lot of people who work with kids have a lot of pent-up anger and would not show similar restraint, especially teachers. It would have been terrific to see more than one character defend themselves but with different emotional reactions. Does even Roth have a line that he will not cross? It was a missed opportunity. If the teachers were less two dimensional, sure it would have detracted from the unaffected kids’ story, but then the audience could be more invested in rooting for certain people to survive. A lot more adults hate children and would leap at any opportunity to have carte blanche reasons to hurt one, which in part, was a moral of the story. Also, the girls in the story were too often damsels in distress with a weird superpower. Hint: it is a sign of an eating disorder. Abbott does get to display some amazing physicality in one scene, which she makes seem as if her character is in the predicament, not pretending. Roth prioritizes guys working on getting the girls than the girls doing anything very impressive. Lizzie gets points deducted for being aware of the danger then still acting like a dumb ass and trying to interact with children.
The mythology is fairly decent though some twists are somewhat obvious if you are paying attention to details. Editor Matt Lyon underscores in the beginning and writer Noah Belson offer enough hints in the dialogue to the Ice Cream Man’s objective long before it is revealed. Roth decides to intersect it with Christian mythology and uses a grainier film stock as if it is an older film to depict the back story for the titular character. There is a blink and miss it condemnation of the Catholic Church before he rushes to safer targets of ire. Visually, Roth evokes the idea of a Pied Piper like influence on children and uses animation to reflect one trigger of brainwashing, which is aligned with the casual cartoon violence evoked in the story, carefree, gleeful, giddy and unremitting, while simultaneously showing how the influenced kids are interpreting the havoc that they are wreaking.
“Ice Cream Man” is probably better to watch in the theater because the average movie goer needs a communal experience to appreciate the details and Roth’s sick sense of humor. People need permission to laugh at irreverent, taboo violence that they may not feel at home doing when they are just watching it straight and can only appreciate it theoretically like someone typing “LOL” with zero hint of a smile. The three kids carried the movie effortlessly and are naturals. Overall Roth’s latest may not be his greatest, but it is well done and is one of his stronger horror entries. There is a delightful post-credit scene with the same insouciant vibe as the end of “The Monkey” (2025).
