Eli Roth
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Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George A. Romero
influenced Cabin Fever (2003), Knock Knock (2015)
Themes Plot
If you’re expecting anything like intelligence, subversion or social commentary—something that’s no stranger to the horror genre, from classics like Night of the Living Dead to more recent films like The Babadook and It Follows—you’ll walk away from Knock Knock disappointed.
That's because most of the film is nothing but a series of references and homage to previous releases ranging from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to "Night of the Living Dead" and a whole host of others.
Entire bits of the film are lifted from Evil Dead 2 and Night of the Living Dead and numerous other films.
For the audience, we are treated to a 90-minute homage to the true classics of the horror genre: "Evil Dead," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Night of the Living Dead" and others.
Roth's knowing homage to the gory glory days of 1970s American horror cinema draws inspiration from "Night of the Living Dead," the collected works of David Cronenberg, and every stupid kids-trapped-in-the-woods slasher movie.
The movie is actually not as nasty as he claims, though there are some nasty images of lesions and the like, and plot-wise it has more in common with The Stand than Night of the Living Dead.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Directed by Ruggero Deodato
influenced The Green Inferno (2014), Ice Cream Man (2026), Knock Knock (2015)
Themes
…his Cannibal Holocaust homage, The Green Inferno (2013)…
…before being slaughtered in ever more old-fashioned Cannibal Holocaust ways…
Still, with that in mind, it's interesting to see how Roth's fanboyish impulse to top "Cannibal Holocaust" director Ruggero Deodato and his Italian contemporaries winds up inadvertently revealing the relatively humanizing aspects of "The Green Inferno" as a cultural critique.
Between one of the captives experiencing a bout of explosive diarrhea and another formulating a plan to get their captors high by stuffing a corpse with a bag of weed, it seems as if Roth was as inspired by Cheech and Chong as he was by Ruggero Deodato (whose notorious “Cannibal Holocaust” provides “The Green Inferno” with its title — the exact same as found-footage forerunner “Cannibal’s” film-within-a-film).
While not as luridly violent or extreme as that notorious touchstone Cannibal Holocaust directed by Ruggero Deodato, it's still a full-on, nerve-rattling experience.
The story of Cannibal Holocaust and The Green Inferno is the tale of two different approaches to horror filmmaking.
Ice Cream Man flaunts a host of influences, from 2014’s Cooties, another school-set horror-comedy involving ravenous children, to last year’s Weapons…
…in a post-Weapons world…
It’s also hard not to notice the visual similarities between the kids in this and the big finale of Weapons.
Between Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned, Them, and most recently, Weapons, there’s a great deal of variety when it comes to creepy children fare.
…a wave of smart, elevated horrors such as Obsession, Backrooms, and Weapons, which it bears some surface similarity to…
The film desperately wants to become the next Terrifier or Weapons, yet never understands what made either of those films memorable in the first place.
…à la the Terrifier films (dir. Damien Leone, 2016; 2022; 2024)…
The torture-porn market has been sewn up by Damien Leone’s Terrifier series, which does practical effects more imaginatively and gruesomely than this.
The film desperately wants to become the next Terrifier or Weapons, yet never understands what made either of those films memorable in the first place.
This is Terrifier levels of carnage…
Straight out of the Terrifier school of marketing, Ice Cream Man sells itself as little more than a sideshow for bad taste kills engineered to “getcha.”
Roth has said in promotion of this movie that he was emboldened to make Ice Cream Man by the success of the Terrifier franchise, as audiences were proving that they were willing to turn up in droves to see heinously violent movies on the big screen.
The Goonies (1985)
Directed by Richard Donner
influenced The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018), Ice Cream Man (2026)
Plot Themes Visuals
…some other kids to form an anti-whip Goonies…
Based on the 1973 novel by John Bellairs, who came to specialize in young adult gothic and supernatural mystery stories, it evokes both the live-action Disney films of the 1970s, including Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), Return From Witch Mountain (1978), and The Watcher in the Woods(1980), and the successive series of 1980s suburban fantastic movies—Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985), Explorers (1985), and The Monster Squad (1987)—most of which were either produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment (which produced House) or were inspired by them.
For the most part, Roth is interested in channelling the visuals and atmosphere of an Amblin classic from the 1980s, such as Gremlins or The Goonies , though he never manages to summon up the same emotional charm.
Roth adapts his style well in his attempts to capture the charm and warmth of his inspiration, the 1980s Amblin classics like The Goonies and Gremlins .
Looking back, Amblin Entertainment — that Steven Spielberg-hatched shingle responsible for such films as “Gremlins” and “The Goonies” — may as well have defined the concept of movie magic for a generation, only to see it watered down by all the computer-generated juvenile thrill rides that followed.
Roth and Amblin may have been aiming to make The House With a Clock In Its Walls a return to the Spielberg classics of the ’80s, but it’s missing the sense of adventure, memorable characters, and the imagination that made movies like E.T. and The Goonies so beloved.
It isn’t a reboot of the 1995 Clint Howard classic (Thankfully!)
It’s definitely better than the 1995 Clint Howard film of the same name that many assumed it was remaking.
I was confused as to whether this was a remake of the 1995 film starring Clint Howard…
“Ice Cream Man” is neither a remake of the 1995 straight to video movie…
Horror fans of a certain creed, though likely not many others, will recall 1995’s Ice Cream Man, a low-budget horror-comedy starring everyone’s favorite weirdo, Clint Howard, as a demented ice cream man who blends human body parts into his various frozen treats.
Indeed, Roth’s movie shares its title with a 1995 direct-to-video curiosity starring Clint Howard, though this one is unrelated.
I remember visiting the old Deuce — where I sat behind a guy who wasn’t just smoking pot, he was using a bong, great clouds rising to the peeling ceiling — to see Make Them Die Slowly, which I’d later learn was the American grindhouse title for Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox.
More than a decade later, this 2013 offering (which will crawl on to UK DVD this month after a fleeting theatrical platform) finds him regurgitating Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust and Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox, with added female genital mutilation.
He’s the brand of filmmaker who feels the need to combine the “parody” of something like a Date Movie film spoof with the likes of Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust or Umberto Lenzi’s 1981 Cannibal Ferox, crafting something that has neither the ostensible self-awareness nor the controversy of either.
Back to the Future (1985)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
influenced The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Themes Visuals
An odd and weird combination from the start, and hoping to be a nostalgic throwback to the realms of “Back To The Future” and “Casper” with a spice of “Jumanji” meets “Goosebumps” - Roth’s ‘The House with a Clock in its Walls” gets less interesting the more you dig deeper.
The period of Hollywood filmmaking that Roth is most keenly paying homage to is not the '20s or even the '50s, but the '80s, and the film is as much about tipping the hat to Amblin classics like Back to the Future (as well as the work of Spielberg himself) as it is a pro forma paean to embracing one’s weirdness.
Roth and screenwriter Erik Kripke (TV's Supernatural , Timeless ) also offer up plenty of allusions to another '80s hit – be it the opening clock scene, or the movie playing at the local cinema, this has Back to the Future homage written all over it.
In case we haven’t got the point, Roth’s 1955 set fantasy contains multiple allusions to Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future, pitching his fantasy as a film full of wonder and mischief, built on the relationship between a kid and his older, eccentric mentor.
Jon Hutman‘s production design is appropriately gothic, creating settings that invoke The Addams Family , A Series of Unfortunate Events and even Back to the Future .
The film is directed by Eli Roth, whose films Hostel and its sequel put him in the first rank of "torture porn" makers – which could be a problem, but it seems that he seized the chance to embrace the PG world because it meant working with Amblin, the company responsible for Spielberg's classic, ET , along with Gremlins , Back to the Future and many more.
Midsommar (2019)
Directed by Ari Aster
influenced by Hostel (2006), The Green Inferno (2014)
Plot Themes
En cualquier caso, el pitch de esta película, antes de que Aster aceptara escribirla, fue hacer “una versión de Hostel (2005) en un rito folclórico sueco”.
This culminates in the film feeling like an arthouse version of HOSTEL or CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, with detached westerners coming in to judge a different society while displaying their own horrible ways.
It’s been a staple of the horror genre as far back as An American Werewolf in London (1981), and more recently the formula was honed with the likes of Hostel (2005) and The Ruins (2008).
Louder, more gory horror films have been made about this idea (“Turistas,” “Hostel”), but now comes an unusual marriage of cautious observation with twisted motivation.
“Torture porn” was still in vogue (in some sense, it’s never not) and the company was envisioning a Hostel -style movie involving “American tourists going to Sweden and them being killed off during Midsummer,” the summer solstice festival with deep pagan roots.
The remainder of Midsommar plays like a high-toned version of Eli Roth's xenophobic gorefests Hostel (2005) and The Green Inferno (2013), following the American tourists (and a couple of British students they meet along the way) as they come to realize that Pelle's seemingly peaceful commune is really a death- obsessed cult.
To nutshell Fresh , think of David Lynch & David Cronenberg co-directing a cautionary tale about online dating as written by early Eli Roth, whose Hostel films are echoed herein.
Know that the irresistibility of “Fresh” lies in the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously—all things considered, the film manages to stay light on its feet with its “Hostel” meets “Ex Machina” concept, mostly avoiding overt, self-righteous preachiness in its moderately-feminist tale where women’s bodies are perishable commodity.
A gory allegory for our dangerously impersonal consumption-oriented dating culture, “Fresh” has more than a little in common with past torture-porn movies: Think “Hostel,” with a wicked glow up and a lot more likes.
It shares more in common with Eli Roth’s Hostel than almost any other film we can think of, though there are elements of Get Out, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs throughout.
There’s also a fair bit of Hostel in Fresh, at least in terms of where body horror stands on the scale of sociocultural expression.
As far as midnight movie antics go, Fresh delivers macabre mutilations the likes of which they never attempted in Saw or Hostel.
…until Ice Cream Man effectively becomes a feature-length reminder that Terrifier, Weapons, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and countless others already explored similar ideas with infinitely greater confidence.
Anyone familiar with “A Nightmare on Elm Street” will immediately recognize where Roth is drawing inspiration, and not in a flattering way.
The rest of the space in the script features plot elements that come a little too close to the likes of Weapons, Village of the Damned, Shaun of the Dead, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
It feels like a mashup of the Pied Piper and A Nightmare on Elm Street, so if those stories particularly appeal to you, then Ice Cream Man might be more up your alley.
Day of the Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Hannibal and more all get nods…
Roth begs, borrows, and steals from the best, including a fair amount of George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies) and, of course, Sam Raimiâs first two Evil Dead films, but there are also echoes of other exercises in paranoia, including William Wylerâs The Desperate Hours, of all things.
Ice Cream Man flaunts a host of influences, from 2014’s Cooties, another school-set horror-comedy involving ravenous children…
…in the limited sub-genre of psycho youngsters, Cooties, Devil Times Five and The Children did it way better…
Like those tainted chicken nuggets from 2014’s Cooties, the treats served up in Ice Cream Man turn the kiddos into murderous zombies…
Think Cooties meets Terrifier when it comes to the grotesque violence at the hands of murderous tykes.
Ice Cream Man has a similar set-up to 2014's Cooties, another horror comedy in which kids are transformed into pint-sized killing machines.
Goosebumps (2015)
Directed by Rob Letterman
influenced The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Plot Themes
As if director Eli Roth hoped borrowing concepts from the likes of the Harry Potter films, Lemony Snicket , and Goosebumps would suffice, as opposed to creating something mildly original instead, House… at once fails as a scary tale for the young audience he’s clearly aiming for and as an enjoyable romp for the adults who will go along rather begrudgingly.
Which, combined with the rotund presence of Jack Black and the fact it’s based on a kids’ novel (by John Bellairs), suggests The House With A Clock In Its Walls might be little more than a Goosebumps doppelgänger.
Based on the novel by John Bellairs, this comic horror fantasy will initially remind viewers of another Jack Black family scarefest, Goosebumps , as it skilfully mixes humour and slick CGI with thrills as Lewis uncovers the secrets of both his uncle and his new home.
The recent Goosebumps revival is as close to this in spirit as anything in recent memory and, as with that film, it’s a reminder that Black is really great at a lot of things, including this.
It puts recent efforts like 2015’s Goosebumps (which incidentally also starred Jack Black, the erstwhile headliner here) to shame while at the same time reminding me of past favorites like Gremlins , Adventures in Babysitting , The Witches and even that first adventure of everyone’s favorite boy wizard Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone .
"House" has decent scares for a kid's flick, and an adventurous spirit reminiscent of "Monster House" or a chapter in the "Goosebumps" franchise.
…over-the-top genre entries like Thanksgiving (directed by Eli Roth, the slasher genre's other Eli)…
“Clown in a Cornfield” is no “Thanksgiving” (2023), but it belongs in the same category for combining themes, having a message and committing to merciless mayhem.
…or the town-mascot-driven carnage of Thanksgiving…
…where Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, M3GAN, and Ti West’s X prove the genre’s versatility…
…this plot eerily follows the bullet points of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, which itself was informed by his own fake film trailer made for the Tarantino and Rodriguez Grindhouse double-feature…
By the time Frendo goes on a murderous rampage in the midst of the town’s Founder’s Day weekend, it’s a pretty shameless knockoff of Thanksgiving.
Ice Cream Man feels like an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? or the Goosebumps television series, but with foul language and forced gore…
At times, it resembles the bloodiest episode of “Goosebumps” ever made, only without the charm or sense of adventure.
Based on the look of the movie, its premise, and the performances, it feels like a feature-length R-rated episode of the Goosebumps TV show.
…it’s firmly rooted in the pre-Scream (1996) era of slashers, before Wes Craven introduced irony and characterisation to the sub-genre…
…rather than a companion piece to the blackly funny murder-mystery of Thanksgiving, which riffed on Scream as much as 80s slashers…
After Thanksgiving — an equally funny and frightening slasher with Scream vibes — Roth seems to have regressed to a juvenile, meanspirited state, as he’s interested only in inflicting harm.
Technical credits are uniformly high and the whole is driven by a wonderfully compelling score that combines Angelo Badalamenti's compositions with David Hess's music for "The Last House On The Left." Starring Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent and Joey Kern.
Friday the 13th (1980)
Directed by Sean S. Cunningham
influenced Ice Cream Man (2026)
Themes Visuals Music
…until Ice Cream Man effectively becomes a feature-length reminder that Terrifier, Weapons, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and countless others already explored similar ideas with infinitely greater confidence.
It’s the type of practical effects display that will remind horror fans of old-school classics like Friday the 13th…
There’s even a musical stinger of whispers every time a kids creeps up in the background that’s a blatant ripoff of Friday the 13th.
…peculiarly, Hitchcock’s eternally terrifying The Birds…
While it is clearly intentionally borrowing elements from things like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Birds, and some of the other aforementioned movies, it never comes close to equaling the merits of any of its influences.
One scene, which makes a clever and direct reference to The Birds…
…the only homage that truly works is the one lifted from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, whereby the children amass on a playground climbing frame before a frenzied attack…
…and even 1963’s The Birds, which is directly evoked in a scene that mimics one of that film’s famous sequences, where a group of crows gradually gather behind Tippi Hedren in the schoolyard.
…pop-culture references ranging from the Pied Piper to Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS…