Horror filmmaker Eli Roth likely watched the “Terrifier” franchise and thought, “man, that looks like fun.”
He’s right, but there’s a method to director Damien Leone’s hard-R madness. It starts with Art the Clown, the fiendish killer with the coal-black sense of humor.
Plus, there’s style, interesting characters and tension to go with all of those entrails.
All of the above are in short supply with Roth’s “Ice Cream Man.” The thriller has all the bloodshed a genre junkie craves, but there’s little to savor beyond the ick factor.
Young Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) lives in the bucolic Bayleen Bay suburb, a tract of land that feels trapped in another era. It’s not the 1950s, but it sure feels like it.
The poor lad is a disaster on his Little League team and gets plenty of bullying, but he becomes an unlikely hero all the same.
Why?
An ice cream man with a Mamdani-like grin has come to town, and the treats he’s peddling turn children into serial killers. The poor tykes, their faces smeared with ice cream and sprinkles, slice and dice their friends and neighbors.
Darling.
The practical FX here are goofy fun, and some of the kills are dutifully creative. The gag quickly grows stale.
Now what? Well, not much of anything.
Unswirling Ice Cream Man: Eli Roth Reveals Makeup Secrets, Earworm Song Backstory and More (Exclusive) https://t.co/e2dbGMEYEZ
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Roth (who co-wrote this with Noah Belson) has almost nothing else to say or share with “Ice Cream Man.” The characters are all skin deep, at best, the supporting players add nothing to the mayhem and there’s few creative flourishes beyond the initial trappings.
It’s just a murder jamboree, with Jared rallying with the few kids who didn’t wolf down the hip new ice cream. The reasons why they avoided the ice cream fever are clever, to be fair.
Roth creates a goofy, throwback atmosphere, but that incessant ice cream truck music and suburbia trolling aren’t enough to power a feature-length film.
Not even close.
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We do get Exposition Man later in the story, the character who lays out the background behind the chaos. The sequence is so on-the-nose, it’s hard to say if it’s parody or simply a bridge to the downbeat finale.
Either way, it’s a morsel of meaning to savor, even if it includes a de facto attack on religion.
Roth and co. have some satirical thoughts in mind, including what happens when you blindly trust adults. That’s something, but it hardly sustains our interest.
Ari Millen strikes a sinister pose as the title character, but he’s given nothing to do save smile and hand out toxic treats. What a waste, since Millen evokes something ghoulish with the very little resources at his disposal.
Art the Clown has nothing to fear from this dude.
The rest of the cast is forgettable, with Roth himself playing a small role that has little emotional heft.
Splatter films have their charm, assuming viewers lust for that brand of shock. “Ice Cream Man” will make them grin for a few sequences, and then they’ll start dreaming about that fourth and final “Terrifier” film.
HiT or Miss: “Ice Cream Man” is all shock and zero substance.
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