Kids These Days
To those whinging about the sloppy gore and intentional depravity… WTF did you expect?
Ice Cream man
Director: Eli Roth • Writers: Eli Roth, Noah Belson
Starring: Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, Ari Millen
USA • 1hr 26mins
Opens Hong Kong September 3 • III
Grade: C
Kinda sorta titanic horror director Eli Roth has really stepped in it this time. His latest viscera-fest, Ice Cream Man, has been lambasted by critics as “lazy” and “ugly” and “insubstantial” and far be it from me to lob bombs, but it’s hard to see where the vitriol is coming from. Or maybe not. Is Ice Cream Man lazy and insubstantial? You’re damned right it is, but no more so than Hostel or Cabin Fever or the delightfully mean Thanksgiving. But Roth has made his Zionist leanings that irk many crystal clear, and on top of that, when asked if AI was used in the film’s animated segments he said “No.” But when he was called out by press who checked into the studios in the film’s credit roll (bingo!) he tossed out the good ol’ “I misspoke. What I meant was…” In the current climate that’s a more serious offence than a scene in which a Black man is tied by the ankle and dragged down a street behind a pick-up truck. Seriously? No one else noticed? Maybe he’s still being punished for the crime against cinema that was Borderlands?
Whatever your feelings on Roth, Ice Cream Man is, well, pure Roth. The small town of Bayleen Bay descends into bloody chaos in a matter of hours after the Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen, the weird boy clone in Orphan Black) rolls into town. After the end-of-summer community little league game that identifies the bullies and the heroes, everyone lines up for one of his treats. Everyone except Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), whose cone is snatched away by his older sister Lizzie (Sarah Abbott), who exposits that he’s lactose intolerant. Obviously the ice cream is cursed and it turns the pre-teens homicidal – all except Jared, and his classmates, the truant Tommy (Shiloh O’Reilly) and Mia (Kiori Mirza Waldman), who, as a 12-year-old girl, puked hers up immediately.
Watch that Mister Softee…
Killer children horror is a favourite in the movies, despite how hard it is to make them the villains and somehow still honour the unwritten code of not murdering them gloriously the way typical boogeymen get murdered. The OG killer kids most of us flip to are Lord of the Flies, and among a certain set original Star Trek episode “And the Children Shall Lead”, but those had kids ruling and killing each other. Village of the Damned and Children of the Corn really turned it up a notch when the kids went bonkers on adults. All those are sprinkled into Ice Cream Man, as is a dose of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Because of course the Ice Cream Man has an axe to grind.
This is essentially a tween slasher flick, so the star of the show is gore. Pulpy, squishy, bright, gooey, wet-mouth-sound gore. Roth and writer Noah Belson shout out films well beyond Nightmare and Children (there’s some Hitchcock and Romero in here) but never quite hit those levels of sophistication because they don’t have to. The fates of the science teacher, the homeroom teacher, the baseball coach and the principal et al are the end game. There’s some so-so humour but this is gleeful in its nastiness and sadism but also really bleak. There is no glimmer of hope or silver lining at the end of Ice Cream Man, and Roth leaves our heroes dangling in the breeze to wallow in their misery. Who knows, maybe he was in a mood that day, but one thing remains constant: Roth refuses to shy away from the ending we wish a horror film would have, but never has the backbone to commit to.
Ice Cream Man takes place entirely in bright daylight, odd for horror, so there’s no turning away from the blood and guts, but tucked deep, deep, deep down are a few good gags. Mia’s casual bulimia is a particularly sharp barb, and entirely on the mark; the new-agey yoga mom who’s virtue signalling rather than raising her son is one of those we all want to smack in the supermarket; Jared’s dad (played by Roth) and his constant dad jokes are genuinely charming. But in 86 blessedly swift minutes there’s no real time for more. Every time Roth and Belson hint that they may be going somewhere thematically they pull back. A comment on the overworked and underfunded public education system? One generation’s frustration with the mess another has left it? The idea that kids are increasingly out of control? Corruption and predatory priests in the Catholic Church? Nah, no time. Here’s intestines. Thanksgiving had a starting point and a destination, with an idea in between. This is not that. And as for the AI that caused such a stir … The retro animated segments it was used to generate (about the Ice Cream Man’s backstory) are inoffensive to all but real animators and yeah. They had no soul. They may as well have not been there. Vindication? Perhaps.