Love him or hate him, Eli Roth is an unyieldingly interesting guy. On the one hand, he spent his formative creative years as a pupil and cohort of the great David Lynch and went on to become a frequent collaborator of people like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. He made seminal horror films in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, such as Cabin Fever and Hostel, and had an indisputable influence on the genre as a whole. However, he’s also the same dude who has cranked out dud after dud in the years since and seems to be completely unaware of the fact that that has fast become his legacy.
I was hopeful when Roth announced that he would be launching his own media company, The Horror Section, through which he would produce and distribute his own unrated work as well as the work of other filmmakers, that it would afford him the chance to reclaim some of his bite in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, having now seen Ice Cream Man, Roth’s new film, I can confirm that this is very much not the case. Ice Cream Man is a dull, haphazardly constructed mess that fails to break Roth’s losing streak.
There’s this moment in an interview with Eli Roth from a few years back that I think about often. Featured as a guest on Ben Mankiewicz's HBO-backed, TCM-affiliated podcast Talking Pictures, Roth speaks of himself almost exclusively in the loftiest of terms, talking about how he’s directed some of the greatest performers of all time, like Jamie Lee Curtis and Cate Blanchett, and how he steadfastly believes this to be a tremendous feather in his cap.
He says all of this seemingly without an ounce of awareness that the film in which he directed those two incredible actresses was Borderlands, a universally panned and widely maligned film that left such an awful taste in Blanchett’s mouth that she made Todd Field’s Tár in direct response to it. And then, moments later, practically in the same breath, he turns around and recycles a decade-old criticism of David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows in a very bad-faith attempt to illustrate how important it is to think through the construction of a horror film’s narrative and how he is a master of it.
To call Roth’s approach to the entire interview tone-deaf is an understatement, but it’s something I think about often in relation to Roth as a creative. In many ways, it feels as if Roth’s sensibilities as a filmmaker were crystalized during his initial success in the late ‘90s and early '00s and have remained in an unyielding stagnation-fueled stasis ever since. He seemingly has no interest in evolving his craft or his interests beyond this singular point, which has resulted in the vast majority of his later-era career being filled with him attempting to reheat his own leftovers, in one way or another.
The one thing that sets Ice Cream Man apart is that, for the first time in years, there can be no cries of foul with regard to the film’s final edit and release. With Thanksgiving and Borderlands, Roth could allege clashes of creative differences or censorship to compensate for the relative quality of the films. But here? Roth is practically making the film in isolation, beholden to no one but himself, and the result is atrocious.
Ice Cream Man starts out as a callback to ‘80s Amblin-esque films and channels what has to be Roth’s best film of the past decade (by default), The House with a Clock in Its Walls. From the very opening of the film, there is a distinctly ragged quality to the actual staging and filmic qualities of the images that is kind of at odds with Roth’s creative intent. For as grisly and gory as Ice Cream Man gets in its second and third acts, the entire purpose of this first act is to set up a much more clean-cut expectation that those latter parts can then gleefully thumb their nose at. Roth is trying to play this as straight-as-can-be, as further demonstrated by the implementation of Brandon Roberts’ throwback musical score during this section.
But nothing about this section of the film feels particularly effective. The edit is janky, the camerawork feels frequently stilted, and the performances are flat-out sour. You might think I’m taking shots at the young actors tasked with delivering some of Roth’s most gag-inducing dialogue to date, but no, they do the best they could ever be expected to do with what they’re given. Rather, I’m talking about the adults, many of whom are so clearly out of their depths here and whose performances, especially in Roth’s hands, grind the film to a halt at every turn.
And then there’s the gore-filled latter part of the film. Roth has spoken before about feeling inspired by the success of the Terrifier films to branch out, start The Horror Section, and release these kinds of gratuitously violent projects directly to audiences, and that shows in Ice Cream Man itself. But for as gruesome as Damien Leone’s Terrifier sequels can get, there is something of real substance there beneath all the shock tactics. The same can sadly no longer be said of Roth’s work on this film, as anything resembling character, story, or craft seems to be entirely chucked out the window as soon as the blood starts hitting the fan, in favor of just cramming in as many bludgeoning gross-out kills as possible.
It’s not inherently a bad thing that Ice Cream Man is trying to offer a far more surface-level and exploitation-indebted thrill ride. In fact, it could be a great thing. Horror is such a wide and varied genre; it deserves entries of all kinds, and this sort of go-for-broke grindhouse insanity is something that could be a more than worthy addition to this year’s stacked array of horror hits. But in execution, Ice Cream Man is just so devoid of anything worthy of inciting excitement. For all the attempts to incite and shock the audience, Ice Cream Man just wound up boring me into submission.
Also, I’ve debated whether to even include this here, as I have no definitive proof of this and am not keen on throwing such accusations around, but it’s worth mentioning; there are several different elements at play here that look and feel AI-generated. From props to set dressing to little animated sequences to entire janky-ass frames, I’m more than a little skeptical of the artistic integrity of several elements in the film. And should this prove to be true, it’s a gigantic insult not only to the audience but also to Roth himself. If your whole deal is that you want to do things practically, returning horror to its ‘real’ roots, then why are you using AI? Horror is a genre that thrives off of low budgets, and horror audiences are more than happy to champion the underdog. But if you’re using AI, you’re not an underdog; you’re just a hack, through-and-through. (Editor’s Note: Ice Cream Man has been confirmed to feature use of AI-generated footage.)
For what it’s worth, I saw this in a packed theater, and even the most gnarly of kills were getting next-to-no reaction from anyone. By the midpoint of the film, several theatergoers were standing up and walking out. I know the apologist’s response (and probably Roth’s response) would be that the film was just too extreme for them; they couldn’t handle the violence. But the reality is that those people were leaving during the conversational scenes. It wasn’t the violence or the gore that was so repulsive; it was simply Roth and his filmmaking themselves.
An awful film from every conceivable angle.
GRADE: F
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