I Really Hope You Didn’t See Ice Cream Man
If you missed out on AMC’s previous Scream Unseen screening, you dodged a major bullet and I envy your position. On Monday, August 3rd, 2026, AMC gave audiences an advance screening of Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ahead of its official release date this weekend. It’s an unrated horror splatterfest where the titular ice cream man turns the children of Bayleen Bay into psychotic vessels who turn to murdering the adults of the town.
Here’s what we wanted the mystery movie to be going in:
- – Jane Schoenbrun’s Camp Miasma
- – Casper Kelly’s Buddy
- – Not Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man
As soon as the film opened with Roth’s foreword, everyone I came with let out a sigh of disappointment knowing this was the reality of the situation. I’ve heard talk of people who walk out of the Screen Unseen events when it’s not for them, and while I understand—different strokes for different folks—it’s always personally been my policy to see a movie through to the end in the theater. The atmosphere around you plays into that special feeling you just don’t get watching something at home. This was the first time I ever considered walking out of a movie in the theater. And no, it wasn’t because the movie was grotesque. It wasn’t the excessive levels of gore and violence. It wasn’t the subject matter at all. Plain and simple, this is one of the worst movies you could spend money to see.
Just a waste of time all around. It felt like over half an hour passed by the time we barely reached the fifteen minute mark. This movie drags the hell out of a premise that never held much water to begin with and never believed in itself enough to warrant anyone being invested in the stakes. Except, apparently, for the guy sitting left of our group who seemed to be the biggest (if not ONLY) Eli Roth fan in the room. This? THIS is what you applaud? My friend liked Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving and retroactively lowered it one star on Letterboxd after we exited Ice Cream Man. This is absolutely no hill to die on. I could count everything I liked about this movie on one hand—no, one finger. There was one joke that made me laugh in the first 20-25 minutes. That was the only thing I ever felt besides complete boredom and suffering.
I can handle a film that’s very self-aware in how bad it is and how fundamentally it does not work, but this just felt like such an insult to the medium itself that any possible attempt at self-awareness just bounced right off everyone in the theater. You’ve definitely heard by now that the film uses AI-generated visuals in certain sequences, when some of the children have speech-bubbled thoughts depicted in the style of rubber hose animation. It’s such unbelievably blatant AI slop animation that it takes you out of the whole thing, it was so immediately recognizable I’m shocked Eli Roth tried to pass it off as hand-drawn. Generating animation like this has a look that’s unrecognizable as anything but AI slop. It definitely couldn’t have done that much more to the budget to have a small team of guys who know what they’re doing and making like 4-5 short animations in that style for the film. THAT’S it. That’s the SMALL amount of scenes it was used in and they still decided that would’ve looked better and appealed to more people. At that point, why even have animation bits cut in at all? A number of them were confusing and didn’t fill anyone in on what was going through the kids’ heads.
My browser froze for like a minute when I was trying to insert that link up there. This movie sucks so hard my PC doesn’t want me typing about it anymore. I use these keys for writing entertainment news, movie reviews, and Big Walk. Ice Cream Man does not qualify as a movie. It’s a stain I don’t think any director, actor, or producer would want on their filmography for the rest of their life. Even on a night where someone sits down on their couch, browsing streaming services for a bad movie to throw on, I can’t imagine a reality in which this is anyone’s choice. After this movie exits theaters, I expect a quiet shelf life for it on Tubi or Fubo or something before it fades into obscurity, Out of service, like I hope to one day find the career of Eli Raphael Roth.
This is the part where I’d tell you Ice Cream Man is now playing in theaters nationwide, and I still will… because it is. Go see Tony instead though, or Camp Miasma or Buddy when they come out. Just please spend your time and money on anything but this.