Ice Cream Man (2026)

 I'd say this movie was a disappointment but I didn't really have high expectations for it in the first place so it's hard to reach that conclusion. Basically this is a rip off of the concept from "Weapons" ,  and not a very good one at that. The idea of creepy kids being used to take retribution is a cross between a “Nightmare on Elm Street” and the film from last year where Amy Madigan played the part of an ice cream man, sorry I mean witch.

This film is told from the perspective of the young protagonist, a lactose intolerant lad who has been bullied by classmates and even a little bit by his friends,  but in the end, he stands up the firmest against the evil that is encroaching on his small town. The story doesn't make much sense until we get a data dump in exposition from a local priest about 2/3 of the way through the movie. And if by any chance you're suspicious of the priest and what he has to say, you will not be at all surprised at the twist that comes near the end.

This is an Eli Roth film, so no one's expecting much subtlety. When the vicious killings occur, there's not really a lot of cutting away, we're going to see heads separated from bodies, faces smashed to smithereens, and dismemberment galore . Once in a while we get a sly joke inserted into the mayhem, unfortunately they don't always land. I can say however, that there was one bit that landed for me. There is a very funny scene which is basically a takeoff on the playground scene from Alfred Hitchcock's the birds. It builds in a form that mimics Hitchcock's style of shooting in that scene, and the juxtaposition of antagonists is what makes it work.

The Ice Cream man depicted in the film never really talks. And in spite of the horrible things that occur, there is even a slight effort to make his character somewhat sympathetic. That doesn't work, for the obvious reasons that innocent people are harmed in the process and that in the absence of any words of contrition from the victims, the Ice Cream man just continues to smile maliciously.

So the movie plays like the gore version of The Pied Piper of Hamlin, with indiscriminate victims, and innocent children turned into murderers. Ho hum. I guess I should have known when I saw that Osgood Perkins was a producer on the film. Let's just say he's gone zero for three with me, and I'm someone who appreciated that Eli Roth was directing this film,

We Bury the Dead (2025)

An interesting little drama disguised as a horror film, “We Bury the Dead" stars Daisy Ridley as a woman who may in fact be a widow but it's not sure yet. The fact that she is an American becomes an issue because of the potential threat her husband faced. It seems that the United States was testing an electronic weapon in the southern seas when an accident occurred and the entire population in part of Australia was wiped out. Although it may be that they were not wiped out entirely, because this is something of a zombie film.

As a way to get to the distant location where her husband was located deep in the disaster area, Ava volunteers to be part of the National Emergency Recovery team, which basically consists of volunteers to collect the dead and identify those who have been damaged into a zombified state. As she engages in this volunteer work, she is also plotting a way to get the few hundred miles south to the resort island where her husband is supposed to be.

In a way all zombie films are meditations on grief, and our unwillingness to let go of our loved ones even in the worst of circumstances. There are other characters in this story,  who are volunteering for their own personal reasons as well, and Ava forms an alliance with one of them to make her way South with his assistance. So, it is also going to be a road trip movie. Although we know that there are living dead in the affected region, this rarely becomes the traditional kind of horror film that features zombies. It is really only one jump scare that makes this a horror film, as usual, the real monsters in these stories are the living who take advantage of the circumstances.

The story is told with a series of flashbacks to the time before she and her husband were separated by this trip. We learn over several of these mediations that while they were in love, they did have problems. So this is also a film about the discovery in your love relationship. There are complications on the road, and a sense of foreboding haunts us through most of the movie, but there are only two or three moments of real tension. Those moments however were staged very effectively. Ava is viewed suspiciously a few times during the film because of her nationality, but politics is not really on the minds of the filmmakers, they are worried about our emotional psyche.  

I thought the film was pretty efficient at telling its story and keeping it interesting. Those people looking for a zombie film that is filled with double taps, infected bites, and standoffs against hundreds of the Living Dead, will be disappointed. There are a couple of interesting turns during the film, one of which has already been explored in last year's “28 Years Later”,.so this film is second to that theme. There is also an interesting reveal about the personal problems between Ava star and her husband, which comes at the start of the third act.

This must have been a moderately budgeted film, but the director is getting the most out of the resources that they were given. And even though it is a zombie infested Wasteland, the Tasmanian locations are still going to be an inviting tourist spot for those who take in the film. Ridley is solid, operating in a zone between the stupor of grief and the mania of trying to get to her husband. There are two other major characters, and they provide opposite ends of a story continuum, in an outcome that is more hopeful that is realistic.