Eli Roth has once again come under fire, but this time the backlash isn't solely aimed at the quality of his latest movie.
The reviews for Ice Cream Man are in, and like most of the notoriously divisive filmmaker's previous work, the critics were not overly impressed.
Ice Cream Man has now dropped to 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not the worst-reviewed movie in Roth's filmography (that dubious honor belongs to 2024's Borderlands at 10%), but his latest release comes with quite a bit of additional criticism due to the use of AI in at least one sequence.
Roth initially told Polygon that the animation was done by himself and a team of animators.
“I have an animation background and I drew it. I worked with an animation team and I wanted it to look and feel like — there’s an old Mickey Mouse cartoon where he goes to a haunted house and there’s brooms and dancing skeletons and this kind of flowing dancing stuff and the jittery style of the animation. So I drew the loop cycles and the styles.”
“Then I had some animators help kind of make it a little more fluid, and I worked with an artist to give it a bit of an old-timey jittery feel,” Roth continued. “But I sat there and I drew out the frames that I wanted, and I tried to match the style of the 1920s haunted Mickey Mouse cartoons.”
However, when it was revealed that the movie's credits include a mention of Dark Half, an AI VFX firm, Roth was contacted for clarification.
“I misspoke. 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.”
Ice Cream Man hits theaters this weekend, when it will be released unrated, which is something Roth has fought for throughout his career.
“Part of horror is you’re being distasteful,” Roth said in another recent interview. “And for people in studios, it’s hard to be distasteful because they’re making stuff that they want to be celebrated and socially acceptable. And part of what you’re doing by making a good horror movie is you’re being transgressive and you’re pushing the boundaries.”
Roth also blamed studio interference for the disastrous theatrical cut of Borderlands.
“You got something that belonged to nobody. It’s not a kids’ movie, but it’s trying to appeal to everybody. It’s for gamers, but it doesn’t have the violence the gamers want because it can’t be that extreme because it costs too much. You just wind up with a movie that’s neither fish nor fowl.”
Ice Cream Man also stars Byron Davis (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3), Karen Cliche (Thanksgiving), Dylan Hawco (Heartland), Sarah Abbott (Black Mirror, The Body), Shiloh O’Reilly (Thanksgiving), Kiori Mirza Waldman, Charlie Zeltzer (The Handmaid’s Tale), and Charlie Storey (Thanksgiving).