Variety Pans Eli Roth's 'Ice Cream Man' as Derivative Splatter
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- Variety critic pans Eli Roth's "Ice Cream Man" as "shamelessly derivative" and "jaw-droppingly bare-bones basic," arguing it ranks as a steep downgrade from his "Hostel: Part II" and "Thanksgiving" work.
- Ari Millen stars as the mute ice-cream man in the fictional town of Bayleen Bay, modeled after Art the Clown from the "Terrifier" films, who distributes cones with flavors like "Locust Lick" and "Serpent Swirl" that possess local middle schoolers.
- Three uninfected kids led by lactose-intolerant Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) survive by escaping into a freezer, where a priest reveals the killer's backstory involving a Catholic child-sex-abuse scandal.
- Roth himself plays the hero's "geek dad," with the film's climax featuring children using intestines as jump ropes and a severed head as tetherball — gags the review calls "beneath him."
- The review compares the film unfavorably to "Village of the Damned," "Weapons," and the opening of "Halloween," writing that those films "all tower over" Roth's effort.
- The review critiques the film's reverence for practical effects as overstated, drawing a parallel to how "The Odyssey"'s practical-effects use has been discussed "in awed tones" despite storytelling lapses.
Why it matters: Variety frames "Ice Cream Man" as a creative regression for Roth, a director whose prior genre entries "Hostel: Part II" and "Thanksgiving" earned praise, making this a notable reputational stumble rather than a low-budget obscurity. The IndieWire headline — visible only as a title — frames the film as "the 'Saving Private Ryan' of Splatter Movies," a marketing-friendly pitch that directly contradicts Variety's verdict, signaling the kind of hype-versus-critical-reception split common to indie horror launches.
