Publication Date: 08-03-2026

Ice Cream Man (2026) review

Dir. Eli Roth

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

For about 70 minutes of its already-short runtime, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man plays like an R-rated Goosebumps. It’s grotesquely violent, but not unpleasantly so. It’s almost cartoonish in the various ways in which children brutally stab, maim, dismember, gut, and at times feast on unsuspecting adults. And then, at the height of its climax, Roth and co-writer Noah Belson execute a rug-pull so deceptive and mean that I couldn’t help but admire the audacity. Seriously, it’s a notch below The Mist in how unexpected and cruel it is.

This is not a remake or reimagining of the cult classic film of the same name from 1995, which starred Clint Howard as a former psychiatric patient turned ice cream factory proprietor. Ironically, it has more in common with the seldom-seen Mack Hail movie, Mr. Ice Cream Man, from the following year, on the basis of threadbare plot and maniacal kills. Roth’s latest is also his first directorial effort for The Horror Section, a company he conceptualized in conjunction with major theater chains in hopes the big players would take flyers on off-the-wall, “extreme horror” flicks. This way, upstart and established filmmakers alike could see their gruesome works enjoy something of a theatrical engagement instead of being relegated to the ocean-deep pool of VOD entertainment as their formal release.

It’s always fun when a horror movie is set in broad daylight. Things start at a suburban Little League game where both teams are treated to ice cream after the final out. Almost all the children indulge, with the exception of Jared (Charlie Zeltzer). His older sister, Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), has to remind him he’s lactose intolerant. That evening, and later into the wee hours of the morning, neighborhood children begin murdering their parents and other adults alike in diabolical fashion. The following day at school, Jared and other students, including Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly) and Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman), notice that just about every kid in the school is a silent, zombified version of themselves. The common thread amongst all of them is they ate ice cream from a truck run by a mysterious figure (Ari Millen).

What unfolds is a very loose work set predominately in/around the schoolyard and adjacent playground. Kids bum-rush teachers and administrators one-by-one as they come out to investigate the commotion only to be killed in some horrific way. A credit to Roth for not cutting away from the carnage and allowing us to see one teacher get force-fed his brains, and another get pelted with bricks from students on the school roof. If you like your slayings relentless and macabre, Roth and Belson serve up more than 31 flavors of brutality.

Eventually, Jared, Lizzie, and his two friends work to figure out what the Ice Cream Man is doing. I didn’t expect the backstory to be as meaty in the same way I didn’t expect Red Dead Redemption‘s Benjamin Byron Davis — looking a touch like Burt Reynolds — to hold down the fort in such an assured extended cameo. In time, it builds to something wildly dark and sinister. Of course, Roth himself is the centerpiece of the film’s mic drop moment that might leave your jaw on the floor in the same way you did when you tasted blue moon ice cream for the first time. If you haven’t yet, you have a new priority.

Ice Cream Man in some ways plays like a sillier version of Weapons. More characterization could’ve been afforded to Jared and his friends, for there is a considerable amount of time we spend with them as they hide out in the school, steering clear from the other kids. Because the focus is so intimately on the violence, few performers rise above their thinly drawn characters. Ari Millen seems to relish being a mute, smiling Ice Cream Man, operating with mime-like physicality and facial expressions, but even he feels a touch underdeveloped. He’s not as much the focus of the film as you might be led to believe; at least not until the third act, in which he gets his own flashback.

If Roth’s Thanksgiving was a feast, Ice Cream Man is more of an appetizer; a well-made noodling that highlights both his playfulness and fearlessness. Many horror filmmakers would show you a kid brandishing an electric knife, and then in the next scene, the exposed cranium of an adult. Roth not only shows you the carving take place, but he throws you a curveball of an ending that knocks the wind out of the summery spirit of the movie in favor of something darker, more sinister. That element might not work for everyone, but it put an even bigger smile on my face.

NOTE: Ice Cream Man will be released in theaters on August 7th, 2026.

Starring: Charlie Zeltzer, Sarah Abbott, Ari Millen, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Shiloh O’Reilly, Eli Roth, Karen Cliche, and Benjamin Byron Davis. Directed by: Eli Roth.