Ice Cream Man will go down as Eli Roths most talked about film but not for any good reason.
The story itself seems pretty simple. Theres an evil ice cream man giving ice cream to children of a small town and in turn the children turn into mind control’d like killing machines going after the adults. Once they attempt to make the story more here it becomes even more dumb though and they attempt to weave in necromancy and a plot line involving the church. Its truly odd because it feels forced out of nowhere.
What is really the selling point here is the gore, of which, there is plenty. The children here brutally murder every adult in their path in some great ways. There is a lot of practical efforts here as well with some of the kills just looking really brutal in the best way.
Sadly though past the gore the issues become aplenty. Starting with the dialog here, its horrendous. We get attempts at either edge humor or even dad joke type humor and nothing lands. Jokes fall flat, exposition comes across forced and meaningless, and anytime we have to listen to characters speak to one another for more than 30 seconds it shows just how little thought seemingly was put into any of it here.
Even at a brisk roughly 85 minutes, the movie drags in its duller moments. No character here is likeable in the slightest with most just being boring stereotypes. While not offensive to myself, as noted by many others online, the fact that there are so many off beat moments or one liners by children here is offputting. A 12 year old states, in a non joking manner, that they know to make themselves throw up and a teenager has to, without hands, make herself vomit off a toothbrush. That doesn’t even mention Eli Roths character himself making a quip about attending a waterpark with his son and looking at his childrens friends in bikinis.
Our Ice Cream Man himself Ari Millen though does a good job. Hes creepy in a sometimes comical way and I could see him being a fan favorite thing in this film. It just needs to talked about, even without spoilers, that this movies ending is just wild and not in a great way. I spoke about how the film is on the shorter side and the ending here feels like they just ran out of effort and said ‘well lets it just end it’. It pretty much closes off at the climax without any bit of closure and feels so abruptly sudden.
What is the real standing issue though here is the AI use. Upon release people called out Eli Roth for AI use in the film, which he denied. He later stated he did use it but just for still images of the cartoons in the film he made and wanted edited. Myself, and it seems many others, don’t believe its limited to that. There are so many cut away shots here that look entirely AI made. Backgrounds, some wide shots, flashbacks, all look entirely AI made and if by some chance they aren’t then I question why the quality drops so frequently.
Overall is this terrible, no. The AI usage is unacceptable though. If you can look past every character here making the dumbest choices, a just oddly put together story, and horrendous dialog, you’ll be treated with some delightful gore of children brutally killing a small town worth of adults.
Score :
1.5 / 5
