Ice Cream Man (2026) Dir. Eli Roth

Picture the scene...

INTERIOR. Production offices

Eli Roth: So what did you think of my script for Ice Cream Man?

Financers: Well we have a few concerns…

Eli: Like what?

Financers: It’s only a page long. It says ‘the ice cream man comes to town and then…’

Silence in the room.

Financers: And then what?

Eli: Gory scenes.

Financers: Love it! But we do feel it needs a little more. Do you have any ideas?

Eli: What if I just lifted two classic horror scenes?

Financers: Like the little girl in Night of the Living Dead?

Eli: And the playground scene in The Birds.

Financers: Perfect. This is turning into a winner. What about themes? We need a message.

Eli: Well, I was thinking we could use child abuse as the main crux of the plot. Tastelessly, of course.

Financers: Of course. Anything else?

Eli: What if we made pre-teen bulimia not only a running joke, but we also made it a positive attribute within the story?

Financers: Amazing! Are you going to write dialogue?

Eli: I mean, maybe. The kids can just swear a lot you know. But I have thought of one scene. What if I played an out of touch dad and talked for ten solid minutes?

Financers: This cannot fail. We can just run the rest through ChatGPT. You’re already using it for other parts of the film.

For those in the cheap seats. I did not like Ice Cream Man. It is a lazy, nonsensical mess.

To pull the curtain back a little bit. I am nitpicky when it comes to reviewing films. I rarely give anything top marks, because I don’t think anything can be a perfect film. Some come close, but if you scour through, there is likely going to be something that brings it down.

To counteract this, I don’t give anything a zero. I think this is an unfair grade because filmmaking is collaborative. There is often something – a strong performance, a good soundtrack, excellent set design – that just about saves the worst films. Ironically, the films that fail on everything often become cult classics.

Ice Cream Man has really tested my limits with this. Eli Roth has stitched together a series of gory scenes, punctuated it with blatant rip-offs, soundtracked it with poor dialogue, and done everything he can to make the film as offensive as possible. No doubt he’s sat laughing at the woke idiots who are offended, but I don’t need a film where bulimia is played for laughs.

I won’t criticise the predominantly young actors in this. Roth could have reanimated Orson Welles, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor and they would not have been able to do any better with the script. But what really bothers me is that Roth writes himself a ten-minute scene, fills it with jokes that feel a decade old so that he can chuckle to himself, and then cuts back to a constant barrage of gory kills.

I won’t even get into the fact that he’s acknowledged he used generative AI in the film. Most of the effects look so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing was done in an afternoon and a few quick prompts.

But this isn’t just a lazy film, it’s a mean-spirited, hateful film. You can feel Roth’s disdain towards the audience, as if he’s actively trying to see how much bilge he can put on the screen before people stop paying attention.

I don’t want Midlands Movies Editor Mike to have to create a quarter star image, so here it is, Ice Cream Man gets a 0/5. Don’t watch it. Don’t support it. Don’t mention Eli Roth’s name and hopefully he’ll get bored and go away.

NO STARS

0 / 5

Matthew Tilt

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tiltmatthew90/