{"id":1129093,"date":"2026-08-04T03:27:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T03:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1129093\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T03:27:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T03:27:16","slug":"ice-cream-man-review-eli-roth-blends-home-alone-and-hostel-for-over-the-top-unrated-bloodfest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1129093\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ice Cream Man’ Review: Eli Roth Blends ‘Home Alone’ And ‘Hostel’ For Over-The-Top Unrated Bloodfest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTaking a cue from the likes of Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Chucky, Candyman, and countless others, Horrormeister Eli Roth<\/a> has now realized a 20 year dream to give the same fame in the genre to the Ice Cream Man<\/a> in the simply titled new film, Ice Cream Man. That\u2019s right. Roth hopes to immortalize the guy who drives around neighborhoods in that musical ice cream truck, the one kids have flocked to ever since wheels were invented. What he has created is just another excuse for mind-numbing graphic terror, but unfortunately has forgotten to provide much of a plot to keep us hooked. The filmmaker felt no studio would touch his vision of unfiltered gross-out dismemberings and the movie is being released unrated and under the moniker of The Horror Section, a new distributor Roth has created to put it into theatres.<\/p>\n

\n\tEssentially the director is taking the idea of seeing kids unleashed to invoke whatever pain they can possibly muster on adults ala Home Alone but making it so gross-out bloodletting that it would get an NC 17 if a rating were slapped on it. What Roth, and his longtime screenwriting partner Noah Belson have concocted is an unfleshed-out idea that is just left with the flesh.<\/p>\n

\n\tOpening on a typical sunny summer day in a fictional American small town called Bayleen Bay, we see a little league game in progress when an Ice Cream truck comes rolling in and the propreitor, a man with a creepy smile begins handing out free samples to all the kids. What a nice gesture. Uh, not. The ice cream man has revenge on his mind because as we will later discover via flashbacks, he was bullied and battered years earlier by the other kids in the town, leading to a miserable life. Now he is back, those kids are now the parents of a new generation that unknowingly is being weaponized thru his ice cream in order to have them kill their parents and everyone else over the age of 12. This is a man serving up double scoops of terror but the children are doing his bidding while he approvingly looks on.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen these kids march into the school the next day like zombies with colorful flavors of ice cream smeared across their mouths, the grown ups do not know what they are in for but about 15 minutes into what appeared to be just a nice idyllic film, all hell breaks loose and these kids one by one start chainsawing off heads, some unmentionable parts, legs, arms, hands , feet \u2013 you name it. They find new inventive uses for daddy\u2019s power tools, make jumpropes out of guts, serve up scoops of the school principal\u2019s brains, and well, you get the picture. Chopping up their parents and teachers has never been so much fun as these kids take command gleefully and with joy as the ice cream man (actor Ari Millen in a dialogue-less performance) leads the band. If all this sounds like your kind of entertainment, I suggest you check in with your therapist.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoth is pretty gleeful himself, a director who has taken the genre to the limits in movies like 2002\u2019s Cabin Fever, 2005\u2019s torture porn Hostel , and the 2023 holiday horror flick Thanksgiving which was the feature film realization of a ludicrous fake theatrical trailer in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Grindhouse, but here he is really stretching the limits of taste, no doubt intentionally. Unfortunately the timing is off as this underdeveloped concept looks like a bad attempted imitation of last summer\u2019s far superior Zach Cregger directed smash hit Oscar winning Weapons which had a similar idea of a whole town\u2019s kids being mysteriously weaponized. Ice Cream Man feels like a (very) low budget attempt to capitalize and exploit, even if Roth has waited 20 years to get it made. Also it seems ill-timed since this year has also seen smart reinventions of the horror genre with the likes of Obsession and Backrooms finding critical acclaim and huge audiences. With this film though we are just back to basics with no ambition beyond finding ways to tear the human body apart that somehow we haven\u2019t seen before. There is even one kid carrying around his severed mother\u2019s head like a stuffed teddy bear. Sweet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNow it does appear Roth and company are going for laughs in some ways, the absurdity of it all, and I must confess it works in one scene with a priest hiding from the ice cream man and delivering complex instructions to three kids who have thus far avoided the curse so they can break the spell and end this holy terror: \u201cYou kill the siren, you cut the Necromancer\u2019s head off, he\u2019ll be wearing a ceremonial cloak, but do not remove the hood, find the ice cream man and remove the hood, make the ice cream man look into the Necromancer\u2019s eyes, that will kill him\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\tGot all that? No spoiler alert on if the kids succeed in this daunting task, but it does all end with a spirited rap tune written and sung by none other than Snoop Dogg. \u201cI Scream. You Scream. We Scream. ICE CREAM!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProducers are Roth and Kate Harrison Karman.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: <\/strong>Ice Cream Man<\/p>\n

\n\tDistributor: <\/strong>The Horror Section<\/p>\n

\n\tRelease Date: <\/strong>August 7, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector: <\/strong>Eli Roth<\/p>\n

\n\tScreenplay: <\/strong>Eli Roth and Noah Belson<\/p>\n

\n\tCast:<\/strong> AriMillen, Benjamin Byron Davis, Eli Roth, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco, Sarah Abbott, Shiloh O\u2019Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Charlie Zeltzer, Charlie Storey<\/p>\n

\n\tRating: <\/strong>Unrated<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning Time: <\/strong>1 hour and 26 minutes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking a cue from the likes of Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Chucky, Candyman, and countless others, Horrormeister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1129094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[51948,77,307213,3943,16,15],"class_list":["post-1129093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-eli-roth","tag-entertainment","tag-ice-cream-man","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117035115959851687","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1129093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1129094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1129093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1129093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1129093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}