Eli Roth's 'Ice Cream Man' turns kids into gore-splattered killers in an unrated splatter film 20 years in the making

A 20-year dream, self-released

Eli Roth has spent two decades trying to make Ice Cream Man, a concept no major studio would touch. He finally brought it to the screen by forming his own distribution company, The Horror Section, and releasing the film unrated. Roth co-wrote the screenplay with his longtime collaborator Noah Belson. The director himself appears on screen as a geek dad who meets a grisly end.

The setup: a pied piper in Bayleen Bay

The film opens on a sunny Little League game in the fictional small town of Bayleen Bay. An ice cream truck rolls up, driven by a mute, perpetually smiling man played by Canadian actor Ari Millen. He hands out free samples with flavors like Locust Lick and Serpent Swirl. Flashbacks reveal he was bullied years earlier by the town's children, who are now the parents of a new generation. His revenge weaponizes their kids through demonically possessed ice cream, turning them into blank-faced zombies who kill everyone over the age of 12.

“The filmmaker felt no studio would touch his vision of unfiltered gross-out dismemberings.”

The carnage: power tools and jump ropes made of guts

About 15 minutes into the film, the children march into school with colorful ice cream smeared across their mouths and begin slaughtering every adult they find. A girl slices into her sleeping mother's neck with a hacksaw; her brother pounds his father's face in with a baseball bat. The rampage escalates through an electric sander, garden shears, a garbage disposal, bricks tossed from a rooftop, and a tug of war using human intestines. The ice cream man occasionally joins in, serving a teacher's scooped-out brains in a cone.

“The real stars of this ultra-gonzo horror film are the folks in the makeup department, especially prosthetics designers Steve Newburn and Adrien Morot.”

Critical reception: gore without a plot

Reviews describe the film as a one-joke piece of splatter schlock that forgets to provide a story. Variety calls it shamelessly derivative and too ludicrous to scare, noting it makes Roth's earlier Thanksgiving look like Vampyr. The Hollywood Reporter suggests only diehard slasher fans will find it euphoric, while Deadline says Roth and Belson have concocted an unfleshed-out idea left with only the flesh. All three trades highlight the prosthetic work of Morot, an Oscar winner for The Whale, and Steve Newburn as the film's real achievement.

“The movie wants to be a lark, but it's such a preeningly garish and ham-handed piece of shock theater that it makes 'Thanksgiving' look like 'Vampyr.'”

Comparisons and influences

Critics reach for a dense web of horror references to situate the film: Home Alone for its kids-unleashed-on-adults premise, Village of the Damned for the blank-faced children, the Terrifier franchise for the mute, smiling villain, and George Romero's living dead for the zombie-like behavior. The ice cream man's silent, creepy demeanor is repeatedly compared to Art the Clown, while the kid-on-adult violence echoes the opening scene of Halloween. One review calls it a "Bugsy Malone of the Living Dead."