Review: Ice Cream Man

I enjoyed Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man more than I did Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day.

There, I’ve said it.

So why was that?

Without going into all of the things that really annoyed me while watching Disclosure Day, let me tell you why I enjoyed watching Ice Cream Man.

First and foremost it was a fun watch and clearly had its tongue stuck firmly into its ice cream covered cheek, and with a lean 86 minute running time, it never bored me (unlike the aforementioned movie).

If this had been a video release back in the 80’s it would have been constantly rented out, and I guess that is why it hasn’t been so well received today, as it doesn’t fit in with the zeitgeist in which a lot of the horror hits of  recent years adhere to.

Storywise, you get the titular ice cream man who travels around suburbia giving out ice cream to children, who don’t realise that the ice cream turns them into demonic killers. This of course leads to plenty of opportunities for silly deaths…something that was a staple of horror movies back in the 80’s.

And that’s about it as far as a narrative, leaving a story twist at the end and the open ended last shot which could lead to a sequel (another 80’s horror trope).

The use of A.I. in the movie has been the bane of a lot of people, and while I don’t condone the use of A.I. in any of the creative industries, it didn’t negatively affect my enjoyment of the mayhem it was depicting. I would of course have preferred if they were practical effects (seemingly a dying art these days…no pun intended!), or at least cgi effects created by people and not prompts.

If you want a silly and fun 86 minutes, then the Ice Cream Man is well worth watching…and congratulations if you are one of those people who didn’t stop reading this after my opening statement!

Review by Dave from a disc kindly supplied by Studiocanal via Fetch Publicity.