Film Review: ICE CREAM MAN (2026): Eli Roth’s Mediocre Splatter-Filled Film May Put a Dent in the Ice Cream Truck Business

Ice Cream Man Review

Ice Cream Man (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Eli Roth, written by Noah Belson and Eli Roth and starring Ari Millen, Eli Roth, Darrin Baker, Benjamin Byron Davis, Karen Cliche, Sarah Abbott, Ryan Allen, Alex Armbruster, Lochlan Miller, Carina Battrick, Charlie Storey, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Dylan Hawco, Lorenzo Antonucci, Steffi DiDomenicantonio, Jordan Poole, Luke Dietz, Kiori Mirza Waldman and Charlie Zeltzer.

Eli Roth’s psycho Ice Cream Man movie could have put the ice cream truck companies out of business if it took itself seriously, but it doesn’t. Not at all. All I can think about is the scene where Sarah Abbott’s teenage character, Lizzie, is paralyzed from trying the wicked ice cream that has turned all the young kids in her town into zombie-like freaks. There’s something brilliant about this sequence in which Lizzie does her best Leonardo DiCaprio from The Wolf of Wall Street impression. Lizzie must throw up to save herself and wait til you see how this scene goes down if you choose to see this movie. Eli Roth was clearly inspired by that DiCaprio film and, of course, the similarly-themed Weapons in his latest mediocre creation and Ice Cream Man sometimes works despite its overall mean-spirited tone for moments like when Lizzie (who is played nicely by Abbott), is paralyzed.

This film features the director as a seemingly good dad who wants Lizzie to work at a law firm for the summer, but she has other things in mind for herself while the young kids in town crowd around the ice cream truck which has a psychopathic killer played by Ari Millen ringing the ice cream bells late at night which gets the kids all migrating together a la last year’s scenes in the far superior Weapons.

Ice Cream Man has a razor sharp edge, but gets lost in its abundance of unnecessarily grotesque, gory sequences. It’s one thing having the kids looking creepy with sprinkles all over their faces, but it’s quite another to see the kids stomping a man’s face into bloody oblivion. Roth has his fans, but he should have dared to do something different by not pushing the envelope as far as he pushes it in Ice Cream Man. Being different would have helped the film out and it could have been a little more subtle. That’s clearly not on Roth’s agenda this time out, as expected.

There are a number of good scenes even if the bad scenes far outweigh the good ones. It’s quite humorous to see the young kids who play the zombies really get into their characters. There were a lot of impressive turns from the young kids here, namely Charlie Zeltzer’s turn as Jared and Kiori Mirza Waldman’s role as Mia. They keep us interested in seeing if these non-zombie characters will escape the wrath of the evil ice cream truck driver who sells ice cream that almost automatically turns all those who eat the product into the living dead.

There were solid scenes early on such as when Roth’s dad character, Marty, sits with his family at the dinner table early on. This part of the movie offers hope that the movie won’t descend into a typical splatterfest. No such luck in that particular regard as Roth is looking to go for broke in the gore department which he sadly does.

Scenes with cartoon characters doing things the kids emulate in their murders is also particularly effective in the movie and offers audiences a significantly creepy vibe, for sure. The kill sequences become the movie’s worst enemy though, and get uglier the more the film goes on. Also noteworthy is that Snoop Dogg offers some music for the film at the end, but Snoop should have known better than to get involved in this ice cold mess.

Those gross-out scenes intensify with each passing minute of Ice Cream Man. There’s some suspense where the kids hide out in a church to escape the evil little ones, but the movie is ultimately concerned with nothing in terms of real character or plot development. People could go to see this movie for horror movie chills and while the film offers some, they get weighed down by the fact that the film doesn’t take itself seriously enough even when the events that happen in the film are seriously traumatizing to watch at times.

Roth has done worse films than Ice Cream Man. However, the fact that he still doesn’t understand what made horror movies like Weapons so great is a bit troubling. Gore is welcome when it’s necessary, but the jury is still out on whether these sickening images the movie displays needed to be packed into Ice Cream Man. What could have been fun turns ugly and what could have been ugly fun becomes a chore to watch as the movie moves into its final kill sequences which ultimately disappoint. It’s a closer call than it could have been, but skip Ice Cream Man unless you never want to get something from Mister Softee ever again.

Rating: 5/10

Leave your thoughts on this Ice Cream Man review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons.

Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Apple News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, Bluesky, and Threads.