ICE CREAM MAN : Tuesday 11th August 2026.

I saw the R18+ Rated 'ICE CREAM MAN' this week, and this American slasher horror film is Co-Written, Co-Produced, Directed and starring Eli Roth, whose prior Directorial credits take in the likes of his debut with 'Cabin Fever' in 2002, then 'Hostel' in 2005, 'Hostel : Part II' in 2007, 'The Green Inferno' in 2013, 'Knock Knock' in 2015, 'Death Wish' in 2018, 'Thanksgiving' in 2023 and 'Borderlands' in 2024. The film was released Stateside last week too, and this is the first film in Eli Roth's founded horror label 'The Horror Section', has garnered generally negative critical reviews and has so far grossed US$4M from a production budget of US$5.5M.

The film opens up at a little league baseball game in the town of Bayleen Bay on a warm summer's day four days or so before the summer holiday break. Right on cue an ice cream truck pulls up close by as the game comes to an end, and many of the children rush over to the truck to avail themselves of the cooling sweet treats. The truck is seemingly owned and operated by a mysterious silent man. Jared Mayfair (Charlie Zeltzer) is lactose-intolerant and so avoids eating the treats and is unsettled by the Ice Cream Man, whom he sees following him as he cycles his way home. He also notices the children who have eaten the treats are in a trance like state, and watching old black and white cartoon videos depicting the cartoon mascot on the truck whose head swivels round as if watching him. 

Much later that night, the truck drives through the neighbourhood with its seemingly innocuous tune playing through the loudspeaker awakening the children who have previously that day eaten the ice creams. Possessed, they proceed to gruesomely murder their parents in all manner of gory ways. The next day, Jared and fellow classmates Tommy (Shiloh O'Reilly) and Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman), who have also not eaten the treats, notice a strange behaviour in their fellow school mates. The truck arrives at the school, and the children suddenly begin killing their teachers and any other adults in town in the most violent ways possible, while force-feeding treats to any non-possessed children. 

Jared, Tommy, and Mia manage to evade their murderous classmates and barricade themselves in the school. In the meantime, Jared's teenage sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott) wakes up in the morning having eaten the ice cream intended for Jared the day before and is partially paralysed and unable to move her arms. She is able to manoeuvre herself off her bed and make her way to her bathroom where she plunges her electric toothbrush down her throat to induce her to vomit up the treat. When Jared calls for help, Lizzie instructs him to meet her at the local church before some neighbourhood children attack the house. Lizzie's ex-boyfriend Chris (Dylan Hawco) saves her and both drive to the church. 

As Bayleen Bay descends into blood soaked and burning chaos, Jared, Tommy, and Mia escape from the school and seek refuge in the church's basement. There they discover a walk-in freezer filled with the Ice Cream Man's treats and find the local priest (Benjamin Byron Davis) hiding behind the stacked up boxes.

The priest explains that the Ice Cream Man is Jonathan Smiley (Ari Millen), a once kind-hearted man who visited Bayleen Bay decades ago and was unjustly blamed for hurting local children to cover up the actions of the town's predatory priests. Jared's grandfather, an influential lawyer at the time, ran the case against Jonathan, and the children were pressured to lie, which led to Jonathan's conviction. While in prison, Jonathan had been visited by a necromancer who promised him to take revenge on the town in exchange for his soul.

To stop Jonathan, the kids must kill the necromancer and the siren accompanying him in his unmarked grave, buried on the far reaches of the cemetery under an old tree. First they have to chop off the necromancer's head, and then remove its hood and have the head stare into the eyes of Jonathan, without looking at the head themselves. When Jonathan arrives at the freezer, the priest sacrifices himself to give the kids enough time to run. Jared, Tommy, and Mia reunite with Lizzie and Chris and convince them to drive to the cemetery to find the necromancer's grave. As they dig up the bodies, the children kill Chris before force-feeding treats to Mia and Tommy, so possessing them too. Cornered by Jonathan, Jared and Lizzie stab the bodies in the grave, and dismember the necromancers head. Lizzie hears a phone ringing under the garments of the siren, and removing its hood reveals to be her own mother Alison (Karen Cliche). Lizzie then calls out to Jared, who by now is holding up the head of the necromancer and has removed its hood too, revealing it to be his father Marty (Eli Roth). The priest is revealed to be the necromancer, having tricked them to help finish the job for Jonathan, for while Jared's grandfather was the convicting lawyer who helped put Jonathan in prison, his young son and future wife were two of the children who lied on the stand in the court room and were also instrumental in sending Jonathan away. 

While the guilt-ridden and heavily traumatised Jared and Lizzie are left surrounded by the violence and wreckage, Jonathan leaves the now-decimated Bayleen Bay in his ice cream truck with the possessed children trailing behind, his revenge complete as he goes to wreak terror on the unsuspecting populace of the next town.

For all the blood, gore, gruesome killings, viscera and murderous mayhem inflicted on unsuspecting adults by their seemingly walking dead children, this film is sure to please the die hard fans of this genre, and which Eli Roth is renowned for (think. 'Cabin Fever', 'Hostel 1 and 2' and 'The Green Inferno' in particular). Putting that aside however, this film is nothing more than a splatterfest without any real semblance of plot or storyline, one dimensional characters, poor dialogue, barely adequate performances, a completely uninspiring antagonist who from memory doesn't utter a single word of dialogue throughout the whole 86 minute runtime and a complete lack of any sense of suspense or tension or even the occasional jump scare. The practical effects are reasonably well executed here and they come thick and fast in the first hour or so in a relentless binge of chopped up bodies, decapitations, smashed in heads, and entrails being pulled from still living victims, amongst many other creative kills that Director Roth has a penchant for, but in the end it just becomes repetitive and tedious.

'Ice Cream Man' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-