{"id":34014,"date":"2026-08-08T20:15:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T03:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=34014"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:15:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T03:15:18","slug":"ice-cream-man-movie-isnt-a-tasty-treat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=34014","title":{"rendered":"ICE CREAM MAN Movie Isn\u2019t a Tasty Treat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Running Time: 86 minutes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This film from The Horror Section opens exclusively at\ncinemas on August 7th<\/sup>, 2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, there have been plenty of horror pictures\nabout murderous youngsters, from The Bad Seed<\/em> to Children of the Corn<\/em>\nand The Children<\/em> (which is a particularly disturbing personal favorite).\nWe\u2019ve also seen a few titles about sociopathic ice cream sellers and tainted\nproducts like The Stuff<\/em> and, well, a 1995 feature with the very same\nmoniker as the picture arriving this week. Ice Cream Man<\/em> is an\nincredibly graphic genre film blended with dark comedy. It offers some grisly\nlaughs and a couple of memorable sequences, but the story doesn\u2019t appear to\nhave been fully churned for maximum flavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The film opens with young Jared (Charlie Zeltzer) fumbling\nhis way through a ball game. He\u2019s berated by bullies and even friends, but\nfinds respite with the arrival of The Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen). The smiling\nfigure offers very odd frozen treats on his menu (although when he serves the\nitems, they all just look like ordinary cones), and is immediately surrounded\nby children. Alas, Jared is lactose intolerant and returns home with his sister\nLizzie (Sarah Abbott) while the others gulp their desserts down. That ends up\nbeing a good thing, as the ice cream turns all the young tots into blank-faced\nkillers. They slaughter every adult in their path, and attempt to force ice\ncream down the throat of any child who hasn\u2019t consumed it. Jared, Lizzie and a\nfew other youngsters attempt to find out what\u2019s happening and stop the\nvillainous salesman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prime selling point here is the nasty ways in which the\nkids turn on adults and slay them. There are some remarkably outrageous and\npainful-looking deaths, particularly when the schoolkids go on a rampage during\nclass. One memorable bit involves an ice cream scoop being used in a bizarre\nmanner to serve up a stomach-churning cone. The adult cast members do their\nbest to play the humor up, adding a fearful comment with a wink as their icy\nends occur. There are also some amusing shots amidst the chaos of kids on the\nplayground running around and playing with body parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And it\u2019s also fun to see a horror picture that is set\nentirely during the day. It certainly doesn\u2019t make for a scary or menacing\nbackdrop, but the fact that these horrible events are occurring under bright,\nnatural light adds a dose of dark humor to the proceedings. It also allows the\ncinematography to showcase several impressive make-up effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As noted, some of the set pieces are fun, but unfortunately\nthe picture doesn\u2019t offer much more and quickly begins to feel repetitive.\nThere are three main sections to the story, with the cold-blooded killers\nrunning riot through suburbia, then their school, and eventually at a local\ncemetery. As you can tell by reading the plot summary, the story is slim and\nleaves its leads with little to do but watch the horrors occurring around them\nand hide. Jared and the other protagonists don\u2019t have character arcs or change\nover the course of the film. They simply run around and go on a bit of a goose\nchase for eighty-minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And all the adults in the picture are presented as buffoons.\nIn fact, they are so unobservant that it becomes irritating rather than\namusing. Even when others around them are being slaughtered, they seem dimly\nunaware of what\u2019s occurring. As for the titular villain, he isn\u2019t\nwell-developed nor does he possess an interesting backstory. The Ice Cream Man\nbarely speaks, and beyond peering through a window or two, rarely interacts\nwith the protagonists. When ultimately revealed, his bland history is clearly\ncribbed from other horror franchise icons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I appreciated the attempts to present some nasty\nattack scenes and even chuckled here and there by the geysers of blood spraying\nacross the screen, beyond that there isn\u2019t much flavor to this chiller. The\nstory is bare bones, and because all the characters are caricatures, there\u2019s no\nreal threat or excitement in how the events will play out. In the end, Ice\nCream Man<\/em> isn\u2019t as much of a horrifying treat as hoped for, nor is it as\ntasty as similarly-themed genre film efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running Time: 86 minutes This film from The Horror Section opens exclusively at cinemas on August 7th, 2026. Over the years, there have been plenty of horror pictures about murderous youngsters, from The Bad Seed to Children of the Corn and The Children (which is a particularly disturbing personal favorite). We\u2019ve also seen a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":34015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[217,4660,6808,9319,9626,9627,9628,9629,11715,21008],"class_list":["post-34014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-217","tag-comedy","tag-eli-roth","tag-horror","tag-ice-cream-man","tag-ice-cream-man-film-review","tag-ice-cream-man-movie-review","tag-ice-cream-man-review","tag-killer-kids","tag-the-horror-section"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}