ICE CREAM MAN (2026) Review

Back in 1987, Carl Reiner made a teen comedy called Summer School, starring Mark Harmon and Kirstie Alley. It remains one of the more underrated gems of the entire 1980s teen comedy wave, and I still hold it fondly to this day. Buried inside that movie is a storyline involving two students, Dave and Chainsaw, who are so obsessed with horror movies that they dedicate their entire summer to recreating their favorite horror moments with fake blood and latex, all while running a season-long campaign to get Mark Harmon to screen the 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in class.

So why am I bringing up a 39-year-old comedy in a review of a 2026 horror movie? Because Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man is essentially that entire concept stretched into a feature. Roth is Chainsaw and Dave, and this movie is his summer school classroom. The film, which Roth co-wrote with longtime collaborator Noah Belson as the first release from his new Horror Section banner, follows an idyllic summer town that descends into madness when a mysterious ice cream man (Ari Millen) serves the local kids sweet treats with horrifying results. And to be clear up front, because I was genuinely confused on this point myself, this is NOT a remake of the 1995 cult classic of the same name.

GENERAL THOUGHTS

Roth uses his lifelong love of horror, and specifically his love of horror makeup, effects and prosthetics, to build an 86-minute kill-fest. There are countless kills scattered throughout, and every single one of them comes at the hands of children ranging anywhere from 5 to maybe 15 years old. His commitment to the bit is genuinely commendable. You can feel the kid in the back of the classroom who spent his whole summer perfecting fake gore finally getting handed the keys.

Unfortunately, that is where most of the positives end. The breakneck tone-shifting means you can never fully settle in, even as a self-prescribed horror fanatic. I believe the film knows how dumb it is, and especially how illogical it is. That alone would be fine, since truthfully most horror films operate that way. The problem is it never shows its hand. The movie refuses to lean into the absurdity of its own proceedings and instead takes itself far too seriously. This is clearly meant to be a horror-comedy, and the premise is deeply silly, yet the performances and the script play it closer to a post-apocalyptic drama at times. That disconnect hangs over the entire runtime, and the film never recovers from it.

THE PERFORMANCES

The acting in this is painful. I want to be somewhat forgiving here, because the plot and the dialogue are so outlandish that no cast was ever going to make this material sound natural. But even grading on that curve, the performances make it nearly impossible to connect to anyone in the core cast. What frustrates me most is that the ensemble had the benefit of outlandish comedy sitting right there at their disposal, and nobody uses it. Played with a wink, these characters could have been a blast. Played straight, they are just flat.

Ari Millen takes on the title role, and here is where that 1995 confusion comes roaring back. That earlier Ice Cream Man starred the incomparable character actor Clint Howard, and I walked into this one assuming it was a remake. Now that I know it is not, it is honestly hard to unsee how influenced Roth was by that version. Millen's take on the character bears a strong resemblance to Howard's from 1995, which only muddies the water on what this film is actually trying to be.

TECHS/DIRECTION

The craft is where the film earns its only real wins. Roth wisely leans on old school practical effects for most of the carnage, with perhaps some slight CGI mixed in here and there, and the results speak for themselves. There is a tremendous amount of practical makeup and effects work on display, and some of the kills are legitimately cool. Roth also understands his genre math. He blends the inherent stakes-raiser of children in danger with the reliable "kids can be creepy and scary" trope, and deploys both in the right circumstances. When the movie is just staging a kill, it works.

Everything surrounding those kills is another story. The aesthetics of this film are way too saccharine, to the point that it looks more like a Nickelodeon TV movie than an Eli Roth production. The cinematography is washed out in a way that belongs in a Home Depot commercial. There is no visual grit, no texture, nothing that signals a horror auteur is behind the camera. Pair that with a lackluster screenplay that cannot decide what register it wants to live in, and you have a movie whose best moments feel like they were airlifted in from a better film.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I will give the ending its due. The plot twist is kind of cool on paper, and I appreciated the hard-out ending, which is a choice more horror films should have the guts to make. The problem is I saw the twist coming from a mile away, and that predictability drained whatever punch the finale had left. So what you are left with is a film with cool kills, terrific practical effects work, and almost nothing else holding it together. The Dave and Chainsaw energy is real, and I respect the love of the genre that clearly fueled this thing. But loving horror and making a good horror movie are two different assignments, and Ice Cream Man only passes one of them. All in all, a disappointment.

🍿 SCORE = 33 / 100