The ice cream truck jingle is supposed to be the happiest sound of summer. In Eli Roth’s new horror-comedy Ice Cream Man, now playing in theaters after its August 3 release, that tinny melody becomes a funeral dirge for an entire town. The film, which runs a brisk 86 minutes, asks a simple question: What if your childhood’s most saccharine treat came with a side of pure evil?
The setup is deceptively classic. Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) and his brother Benji (Kole Parks) are just trying to get through a long, hot summer in a picture-perfect American town. When a mysterious new ice cream man (Ari Millen) rolls through the neighborhood in a pristine white truck, the kids are ecstatic. Soon, however, the sweet delights turn sour. The scoops are laced with something darker, and the toppings are best left unexamined. Before long, the town’s children start going missing, and the adults - led by a frantic Alison (Karen Cliche) and a priest of dubious efficacy (Benjamin Byron Davis) - realize the new local vendor isn’t just selling double-fudge sundaes.
Roth, the director known for pushing audiences to the edge of discomfort, pivots to a more carnivalesque register here. This is a film that knows exactly what it is. It never aspires to the elevated dread of his earlier work. Instead, Ice Cream Man is a blood-soaked romp that leans hard into its comic book premise, complete with Technicolor gore that reads as more silly than scary. The tonal choice is a gamble; the kid protagonists (including Shiloh O’Reilly’s Tommy and Kiori Mirza Waldman as Mia, who refuses to be merely a victim) ground the chaos with genuine performances that prevent the film from collapsing into pure noise.
The real engine, however, is Millen’s performance as the titular villain. He chews the scenery with a manic glee that suggests a man who has fully committed to the bit. His Ice Cream Man is less a monster than a twisted showman, one who treats every murder as a new flavor of the week. His choreography with a stainless-steel scoop is equal parts hilarious and inventive, and he delivers his pun-laden dialogue with a straight face that makes the absurdity land. It’s the kind of performance that gets quoted in dorm rooms for years.
Unsurprisingly, the critical consensus has been split down the middle - and then some. On TMDb, the film holds a 4.6/10, while IMDb users have been even harsher, handing it a paltry 3.8/10. These numbers suggest a movie that has enraged a certain subset of viewers looking for a more restrained, satirical edge. Indeed, for every viewer laughing at the absurdity of a child being blended into a milkshake, there is another who finds the whole affair in poor taste, even by horror standards.
Yet, to dismiss Ice Cream Man solely on those figures is to miss the point. Roth has never been a director concerned with universal approval. He is an instigator, and this film is his spiked sorbet. The more discerning horror fan might argue that the movie fails as a cohesive narrative, and they wouldn’t be wrong. The plot is a loose framework upon which the director hangs a series of elaborate set pieces. But as a summer scare attraction, it functions perfectly. It is the cinematic equivalent of a spook house on a boardwalk: you scream, you laugh, and you leave with a cheap sugar rush.
The film’s timing is also curious. Releasing in early August initially seemed like a sacrificial slot, but in the dog days of late summer, it plays as a welcome dose of anti-nostalgia. It mocks the idyllic, Norman Rockwell vision of American childhood that the fall season will soon try to sell us. Here, the children are resourceful, the adults are useless, and the only authority figure is a psychopath with a freezer full of nightmares.
Is Ice Cream Man a good film? By traditional metrics, no. The narrative is thin, and the social commentary, if any, is buried beneath layers of corn syrup and fake blood. But is it an effective piece of entertainment? For its target audience - those who grew up on Gremlins and late-night cable schlock - it is a guilty pleasure that knows its lane. It is a silly, disgusting, and surprisingly energetic artifact that works best when you stop taking it seriously and just accept the brain freeze. For a late-summer distraction, that might just be the perfect recipe.
