Ice Cream Man (2026)
Directed by Eli Roth
An idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results.
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58 films that influenced Ice Cream Man
What critics say influenced Ice Cream Man
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.
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.
…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…
…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.
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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.
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.
…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…
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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 sugary riff on Children Of The Corn (Children Of The Cone?)
It’s Children of the Corn with extra steps, and somehow less complexity.
…often strikes a cross between Looney Tunes and Home Alone antics…
Essentially the director is taking the idea of seeing kids unleashed to invoke whatever pain they can possibly muster on adults ala Home Alone…
Pete Hammond of Deadline describes the upcoming 2026 movie release as Home Alone meets Hostel…