Ice Cream Man Review

Credit where credit is due: This is not the worst premise on paper, and even sounds like it could be the start of a more campy, cheeky horror romp. Unfortunately, Roth never makes the most of this potential, resulting in a film that’s really cheap and less than clever. This cheapness extends both to the way it all looks as well as the way it’s constructed. From the opening moments surrounding a baseball game that will soon be the last any in this town ever play, it feels like you’re watching a YouTube sketch rather than an immersive horror film. There isn’t any richness or texture to the images, most of the scenes are bizarrely overlit, and lines of dialogue feel painfully cringeworthy in a way that only seems half intentional. The more that it goes on, the more the whole thing proves inescapably awkward and stiff rather than playfully unhinged. Even when a character later gets their cranium removed so that their brain can be scooped out and fed back to them, it elicits little more than a shrug. It’s a movie that inflicts plenty of head trauma but ultimately reveals itself as having no real brains of its own.

At the core of it all is young Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), who — despite being lactose intolerant — will still be tormented by the titular Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen) after he unleashes what is essentially a curse on the otherwise peaceful Bayleen Bay. There’s a vaguely Stephen King-esque feel to the town, but we quickly realize how limited in scope it all is. Rather than feel like a real place populated by memorable characters or with interesting environments for the horror to play out in, it’s all rather unimaginative and just about getting to the next burst of violence, which often does prove genuinely gruesome. Parents are murdered in their beds by their children, the school becomes a site of bloody violence, and the town is revealed as having a darker side that the community has (futilely) tried to keep hidden. Some of this is sufficiently preposterous, with kills involving microscopes, a ladder, and even a Segway all bringing plenty of blood to the table.

That’s where the film seems to be attempting to be more like Terrifier, but where that movie — for all its flaws and own budgetary limitations — boasted great performances in lead Lauren LaVera and David Howard Thornton as Art himself, as well as a real sense of go-for-broke mania, there’s nothing here that brings the necessary energy to make this ride come alive. Instead, we get Roth himself playing Jared’s father and delivering lines like, “Dare I say, he gives me the chills,” in reference to the Ice Cream Man, which repeatedly fall flat. Were the film more playful throughout, maybe moments like this could work; instead, this line lands awkwardly and is followed by one of the most truly strange dubbed lines you’ll ever hear when Roth’s character turns away. It’s all more amateurish than it is darkly absurd, giving you a “we have Terrifier at home” feeling.

Most disappointingly, when it comes to what this horror film attempts to serve up, there just isn’t that much to chew on. It’s never quite creatively ridiculous enough to go off the rails, and the scenes where we’re spoon-fed mounds of rather unnecessary exposition grind everything to a halt. Where the grim pleasures to be found in Weapons were balanced by a creeping sense of dread, Roth’s Ice Cream Man doesn’t earn either. It occasionally gestures towards playing around with some animated sequences, only for those to fall by the wayside. For all it throws at the wall to see what sticks, the surface stays pretty bare. Despite running less than 90 minutes, you will feel the length; a sudden swerve to dive into the backstory of its killer just results in a dreary drawn-out explanation.

In the end, despite how desperately it attempts to replicate what’s been done better elsewhere, the Ice Cream Man is no Art the Clown or Aunt Gladys, and Roth is no horror auteur. Where Weapons was restrained before ending with a bang, providing a dark cherry on top with one of the most satisfying yet sinister endings of recent memory, this film fails to build in any entertaining way and just leaves you with a sense of emptiness. The only real revelation that you come away with is that you could probably entirely skip this meal, including the dessert that is supposedly so important, and not miss much. You won’t be screaming in either joy or fear, but you will open your mouth to yawn.