Ice Cream Man (2026) Review — We All Scream, Mostly From Boredom

It’s the best sound in the world when you’re nine. That tinny little jingle comes warbling around the corner, and every kid on the block levitates off the porch — dollar bills, quarters raided from couch cushions, somebody’s little brother screaming to wait up. The man in the truck doesn’t smile. He doesn’t have to. He’s got the whole neighborhood trained.

You are the only kid on the street whose stomach can’t handle dairy. All summer that’s been your curse — watching everybody else get the good stuff. Tonight, watching your friends’ eyes go glassy and wrong over their cones, watching them drift toward the kitchen drawers, you’re going to learn it was the luckiest break of your life.

Because in Bayleen Bay, the treats are free, the truck comes back after dark, and every parent on the block is about to find out what their kids dreamed about while the music played.

📖 The man behind the truck, in our wiki: Eli Roth

The Review

Let me say the nice part first, because Eli Roth has earned my benefit of the doubt before: this premise is perfect. Not good — perfect. An ice cream man whose treats turn kids into killers is a complete horror movie in nine words, the kind of battered-VHS one-liner Roth has been carrying around since 2003, when he wrote it with Noah Belson and every sane person told him he couldn’t make it. He finally made it anyway, as the first film from his own label, The Horror Section — no studio, no notes, nobody to blame. Which is sort of the problem.

The setup is summer-poster America: the seaside town of Bayleen Bay, a silent vendor (Ari Millen) whose truck becomes the center of every kid’s universe, and Jared (Charlie Zeltzer), the lactose-intolerant kid — the hero by stomach default. One night in, the treated kids rise like sleepwalkers and start with their own parents — and the film is off: a school under siege, treats force-fed to the unconverted, a whole town coming apart. Millen is the real deal, by the way — he never says a word, and he’s the creepiest thing in the movie, a man running on some old, cold grudge while chaos blooms around him. Zeltzer holds his own as a kid lead carrying actual terror, and Roth himself turns up as Jared’s dad, Marty — brave casting, or a man volunteering as tribute.

And the gore — fine, let’s talk about the gore, because it’s the whole menu. The prosthetics come from Steve Newburn and Adrien Morot — an Oscar winner, the Thanksgiving team — and when this thing splashes, it’s genuinely inventive: kills staged like sick sight gags, practical mess by the bucket, carnage that starts early and rarely lifts its foot. There’s a version of Friday night where that’s all you want. On that night, this delivers.

But here’s my hang-up, and it grows the longer the cone drips. The movie has exactly one gear. Thanksgiving — Roth’s own comeback, three years ago — took one gimmick and kept finding new rooms in it, escalation with wit. This one’s escalation is just more, louder, until the joke wears to a groove and the last stretch runs on fumes and repetition. The script being twenty-three years old isn’t trivia; you can feel it. The characters are targets with names, the humor curdles from nasty-funny to just nasty, and the back half leans on a backstory it never earns. It isn’t scary, it isn’t building anywhere, it’s a dare that got filmed.

Then there’s the thing I can’t let slide. This movie sells itself as handmade — practical legends on the crew, “hand-drawn” cartoon segments — and then it comes out, from Roth’s own mouth, that some of those scenes were generated by AI. In a splatter movie built on people making real things, that’s not a footnote. That’s a crack in the cone. Do better.

Harper’s verdict: A hall-of-fame premise and hall-of-fame gore crew, wrapped around a script that should have stayed in the 2003 drawer. Millen is great, the kills are great, and the whole thing still melts — one joke, told louder and louder, from a director who proved with Thanksgiving he can tell it better.

Trivia & Facts

• The twenty-three-year-old script. Roth wrote Ice Cream Man with Noah Belson back in 2003. For two decades, everyone who read it told him it couldn’t be made — his answer, on the record: “kids love gore. They love Halloween. I want to make this the craziest movie I’ve ever done.”
• A label launch. This is the first feature from The Horror Section, the independent horror label Roth launched with Media Capital Technologies — his no-studio-notes answer to shrinking residuals and studio interference.
• Rap royalty in the credits. Snoop Dogg contributed music, and Nas is an executive producer through Mass Appeal. The ice cream truck is the best-connected vehicle in horror.
• Shot up north. Filmed summer 2025 in Hamilton, Ontario — doubling for Bayleen Bay — wrapping in September, with virtual production at Toronto’s Dark Slope Studios.
• A record nobody wanted. Its opening-weekend per-screen average was the lowest of any wide-release film in Roth’s career — lower than The Green Inferno.
• Stay in your seat. There’s a post-credits payoff to a running gag. Eighty-six minutes and they still found room for dessert — respect where it’s due.

Harper’s Extras

Watch it with: If the sweet-colored nightmare-Americana itch is what you’re scratching, go where it’s scratched best: Killer Klowns from Outer Space, where the cotton candy is also a trap and the movie never runs out of rooms. And for practical gore with actual escalation, the Terrifier films are the current gold standard — start with Terrifier and watch a silent killer done right.

The Roth shelf: This is the man’s first swing under his own banner, and it lands well below his comeback form — our Eli Roth profile tracks the whole bloody filmography, from Cabin Fever and Hostel to Thanksgiving, the holiday slasher that proved the old dog’s still got it. Watch that one first.

Where to Watch

Ice Cream Man is on digital now — rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video (PVOD), Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and YouTube Movies & TV (since September 22, 2026). Disc devotees: the 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD land October 20, 2026, with a SteelBook Collector’s Edition following November 17 — scratch-and-sniff stickers included, because of course they are. No subscription streaming home has been announced yet, so for now, the truck only stops at the rental window.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Ice Cream Man (2026) a remake of the 1995 Clint Howard movie?

No. Same title, same evil-dessert energy, zero connection. Roth’s film is an original story he wrote in 2003 — the 1995 Ice Cream Man, with Clint Howard as a very different vendor, has nothing to do with it.

Is Eli Roth actually in Ice Cream Man?

He is — on both sides of the camera. Roth directed, co-wrote, and produced the film, and he plays Marty Mayfair, father of the hero, Jared.

Why is Ice Cream Man not rated?

Because Roth released it unrated through Iconic Events Releasing rather than submit it to the MPAA — the film was sold as an anything-goes splatter show, and an NR lets it keep that promise. (In Ireland it carries an 18 certificate.)

Does Ice Cream Man have a post-credits scene?

Yes — stick around through the credits for a payoff to one of the film’s running gags. It’s short, it’s silly, and it’s the most dessert this movie serves.