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Ice Cream Man<\/em><\/u> will be released in theaters on August 7.<\/em><\/p>\nEli Roth is no stranger to violence. Over the course of his career, from directing unrelentingly gruesome films like Hostel<\/u> and the darkly fun yet forgettable recent Thanksgiving<\/u> to playing a brief yet memorable part in Inglorious Basterds<\/u>, he\u2019s made blood and viscera the materials with which he paints. Sometimes, this has yielded results you can\u2019t help but be begrudgingly captivated by, where the more the blood runs, the more you can\u2019t bring yourself to look away. Still, in many other cases (looking at you, Cabin Fever<\/u> and The Green Inferno<\/u>), it\u2019s felt like Roth was shamelessly lifting ideas from older, far better movies without adding anything new. Rather than feeling like homage, they\u2019re closer to poor imitation. Instead of being remotely horrifying, the scariest thing about a growing number of Roth\u2019s films \u2014 when they aren\u2019t outright disasters like the baffling Borderlands<\/u> \u2014 is how derivative they are. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\nSuch is the case with Ice Cream Man, Roth\u2019s first film directed under his company, The Horror Section. Not to be confused with the 1995 horror movie of the same name starring Clint Howard, this is a film about the dangers of consuming too much ice cream that itself feels like it\u2019s gobbled up too many past horror films and puked them out. However, what\u2019s strange this time around is how his latest is not just indebted to horror of the distant past, but recent genre hits like the Terrifier<\/u> series and Zach Cregger\u2019s Weapons<\/u>. It\u2019s once more not nearly as good as either of those, lacking the chaotic madness of Art the Clown in its killer and the more haunting yet humorous patience with which Cregger approached his stellar horror film. Instead, it\u2019s just a sporadic smashing together of both of them, bringing together murderous kids trapped in a trance of some kind, and a silent though far less entertainingly expressive killer pulling their strings. The primary difference? The reason for the kids becoming murderous involves eating ice cream. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s really cheap and less than clever. This cheapness extends both to the way it all looks as well as the way it\u2019s 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\u2019re watching a YouTube sketch rather than an immersive horror film. There isn\u2019t 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\u2019s a movie that inflicts plenty of head trauma but ultimately reveals itself as having no real brains of its own. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\nCharlie Storey as Piper in Ice Cream Man. Photo: The Horror Section 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
At the core of it all is young Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), who \u2014 despite being lactose intolerant \u2014 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the film seems to be attempting to be more like Terrifier, but where that movie \u2014 for all its flaws and own budgetary limitations \u2014 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\u2019s nothing here that brings the necessary energy to make this ride come alive. Instead, we get Roth himself playing Jared\u2019s father and delivering lines like, \u201cDare I say, he gives me the chills,\u201d 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\u2019ll ever hear when Roth\u2019s character turns away. It\u2019s all more amateurish than it is darkly absurd, giving you a \u201cwe have Terrifier at home\u201d feeling.<\/p>\n
The Ice Cream Man is no Art the Clown or Aunt Gladys, and Roth is no horror auteur.
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nMost disappointingly, when it comes to what this horror film attempts to serve up, there just isn\u2019t that much to chew on. It\u2019s never quite creatively ridiculous enough to go off the rails, and the scenes where we\u2019re 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\u2019s Ice Cream Man doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
In the end, despite how desperately it attempts to replicate what\u2019s 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\u2019t be screaming in either joy or fear, but you will<\/em> open your mouth to yawn.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>Ice Cream Man will be released in theaters on August 7. Eli Roth is no stranger to violence. Over the course of his career, from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2088,2087,140,28],"class_list":["post-74178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-cream","tag-ice","tag-man","tag-review","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}