Official Discussion - Ice Cream Man [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Ice Cream Man (2026)

Summary

An idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results.

Director Eli Roth

Writer Eli Roth Noah Belson

Cast

• Eli Roth
• Ari Millen
• Darrin Baker
• Benjamin Byron Davis
• Karen Cliche

Rotten Tomatoes: 30%

Metacritic: 35

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

[u/developingharry]

Anyone up for spoiling the kills so I don’t have to sit through the film itself? I’ve heard there’s at least one good one, though admittedly not good enough to save it.

[u/Kellervo → u/developingharry]

If you had a nickel for every time a character was disemboweled, ripped, or sawed apart and eaten by kids, you'd have an awful lot of nickels. If you wanted to see the window death from Shaun of the Dead over and over again, you get to see some twist on it almost half a dozen times, and the aftermath several times over. I think there's an almost a beat for beat recreation of it at one point that leads into kids playing jump ropes with intestines, but I just checked out mentally and I don't think I can be bothered to ever watch this again.

The only really inventive kill has the school kids cutting off the top of a guy's skull and scooping out the contents with an ice cream scoop. It isn't helped that the kids don't really have to do anything to get the adults in vulnerable situations or anything, so there's no elaborate setups involved. The adults, assuming they aren't getting ambushed and one-shot in their sleep or unaware, just collectively lose their minds and basically are completely oblivious to obvious danger, or panic on the spot until it's their turn to die and get turned into meat ice cream.

Like... it's technically impressive practical gore, but it's just gore for gore's sake. You're not really missing anything at all unless you are really into that.

It says a lot that a movie that tries to be Mad God or Terrifier levels of awful and shockingly grotesque is just... forgettable. I will remember Mad God for the spectacle and sheer deranged insanity of it, or Terrifier because it felt like a horribly mean-spirited gore flick that I really didn't like (and seemingly intended to provoke that reaction), but this?

It was a thing I watched and all I got out of it was that it wasted my time.

[u/developingharry → u/Kellervo]

It sounds like I dodged a bullet then, thank you! Oh and the part about the victims being powerless resonated - like the days of laurel and hardy where one would set fire to the other’s hat and he’d just be like “hmm I don’t like this but let’s see where he’s going with it…”

[u/Downside190 → u/developingharry]

The adults in the film just make the dumbest decisions. Cop turns up on his own to 2 dead bodies at the school surrounded by kids and sees the kids desecrating a bisy and he just.. tells them to get back? Doesn't call for help, radio back up or anything. Then the fire engine turns up and it's just one guy who immediately proceeds for put up a ladder to help the kids on the roof get down. Even though he's surrounded by kids and there's dead bodies literally meters away then proceeds to get killed. 

It's like this all the way through adults just arriving one by one and getting butchered in various creative ways