Ice Cream Man review – Eli Roth’s junky slasher is one of year’s worst horrors

A few years ago, Eli Roth realized his long-held ambition to make a movie out of Thanksgiving, the horror-movie trailer he made as a gag for the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez anthology feature Grindhouse, back in 2007. Though he didn’t actually go so far as to make the scratched-up decades-ago slasher shown in the original trailer, Thanksgiving was still Roth’s most satisfying movie in ages, replete with ridiculous gore and a side of satirical commentary – a 2020s movie fit for an old video store’s VHS horror section despite its contemporary setting.

Now Roth has founded a horror-focused company actually called the Horror Section, aimed at releasing movies, shows and “experiences” that appeal to the modern equivalent of those VHS-shelf gorehounds. After “presenting” a few other movies, Roth’s first direct contribution to the company is Ice Cream Man, exactly the kind of knowingly disreputable button-pusher befitting the company’s retro-sticker logo. (Indeed, Roth’s movie shares its title with a 1995 direct-to-video curiosity starring Clint Howard, though this one is unrelated.) Unfortunately, rather than a companion piece to the blackly funny murder-mystery of Thanksgiving, which riffed on Scream as much as 80s slashers, Roth’s latest feels like a demo reel for someone vastly less talented.