Disturbing new horror about Ice Cream Man forcing mass walkouts and fans 'running out and vomiting'
A controversial horror movie from the director who made Hostel, a film that was banned in certain countries for its twisted content, is disturbing audiences so bad that they are walking out the cinema.
The film focuses on an Ice Cream Man who gives out a demented version of the desert that causes children to go crazy and start killing all the adults in town, and it was released unrated in the US to avoid censorship, allowing for absolutely brutal gore and horror.
Films that spawn widespread walkouts are rare but in recent cases such as Joker 2 and Terrifier 3 it does happen, and Roth’s new film simply called Ice Cream Man has continued that trend.
Ice Cream Man has been just as controversial as those two recent movies that forced mass walkouts, with Roth widely slammed for quotes about his use of AI in the film.
Roth stated that he saw a fan ‘run vomiting’, and other users report walkouts at screenings
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The movie is incredibly gory, with the trailer alone showing children carving a man’s head off and then scooping his brains out like ice-cream. In other words, if you want to watch this film you should go in incredibly prepared for that level of violence.
This was not the case however as Ice Cream Man was selected as part of AMC’s ‘Screen Unseen’ programme and Odeon’s programme of the same name in which fans buy tickets not knowing what the movie they’ll be seeing is.
In some cases you can even see big films a bit early this way, making it quite popular in the US, but some fans were less than pleased when they were met with the incredibly graphic horror.
Posting to Reddit, one fan who attended one such screening in Crawley said they had ‘quite a few walkouts’. Another commented: “8 walkouts for this one, I firmed it as it was 'free' but Christ that was bad.”
A third commenter said their screening had ‘five walkouts’, whilst another said: “About a dozen walks outs, I wish I was one of them.”
Roth described a screening he’d just come from in an interview with Variety, telling them: “People were screaming, I think we had a running vomit which is the highest compliment you can get with a movie like this.
“The crazy thing is that the highest compliment you can get as a horror movie is ‘I couldn’t watch it’.
Of everyone walking out however not all of them are about how twisted the movie’s content is, but in some cases is purely because many think the movie is terrible, and are less than keen on Roth’s AI admission.
Roth admitted he used generative AI in the movie, and it has been slammed by critics
To say reviews have been mixed for Ice Cream Man would be a slight understatement as it debuted to just 28% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.8 on IMDb at the time of writing.
Empire Magazine said in their one star review: “Ugly, unpleasant and utterly insubstantial, this ice cream just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
Many fans online however have been critical about Roth’s use of AI in the film specifically after he said in a statement to Variety: “AI was used in a very small portion of a few scenes in the film. It was an opportunity where technology and creativity came together to help bring my vision for the film to life.”
He released the statement after he admitted to AI use in a specific segment in a previous interview, leading fans to point out the credits thanking AI visual effects studio Dark Half.
One fan on X said of Roth’s statement on AI: “Don’t ever use the word “creativity” in the same sentence as “AI” ever again, bc that is not creativity. that is wasting 15,000 gallons of fresh water bc you couldn’t be bothered to use SFX and/or employ people who could do it much better than AI ever could.”
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, TV and Film, Film, Horror
Michael Slavin