When he came about in the 2000s with his first film, "Cabin Fever", I remember Eli Roth being praised and held aloft as a new voice in cinema, a horror auteur bringing back old school gore flicks. I never was on board with him as a filmmaker: I found his style lacking, his scripting and character work atrocious and his obnoxious style (while distinct, and a misremembered throwback to slashers of old) grating; but in him I saw a pretty fun guy who loved film: he'd worked as a production assistant and lower rungs of the industry, he talked about the older weirder outsider gore flicks, and perhaps most importantly he used his newfound "Hostel" and "Cabin Fever" fame to push other filmmakers and projects. The excellent Soska Sisters got their debut movie ("Dead Hooker in a Trunk") pushed into the mainstream in part by endorsements and efforts of him and Robert Rodriguez; which I am forever thankful for. He produced "Clown" and "The Last Exorcism" (both great fun), and excellent "The Sacrament". Hell, his new production label "The Horror Section" has given niche stuff like Joe Begos' new movie "Jimmy and Stiggs" and found footage movie "Dream Eater" any kind of production and idstribution they would not otherwise have had (despite Begos being a fun, interesting little filmmaker.), particularly in a world where opportunities and horror and art are diminishing in the face of ghoulish, bloated coprorate death spirals.
He seemed to be a voice in horror, an interesting thing to have even if his movies by and large were dreadful: there was a market for him. "Cabin Fever" and "Hostel" may not have been great, but they were new movies scratching the itch the gorehounds had been missing in the mainstream. "Thanksgiving" was a neat little slasher movie which used his obnoxious, odious character writing to actually quite witty effect in a straightforward slasher movie, which managed to take some stabs at consumerism.
He misstepped with "The Green Inferno", a rather slapdash attempt to bring back cannibal movies; and "Knock Knock" was an utterly dreadful remake of an utterly dreadful 70s hippie invasion sex film. But still, he's been trudging along, and maybe it was time for him to come back?
With "The Ice Cream Man", Eli Roth has another swing at what he loves: gore and gore.
The hallmarks are there: we focus on an obnoxious bunch of children in an obnoxiously small town, who happen upon a mute, pencil-moustached smiling Ice Cream Man (Ari Millen, rather good to be fair, largely due to having no dialogue and putting on a mute, "Terrifier" esque performance) whose deadly treats turn the children into homocidal maniacs...
We get blood! We get decapitations! We get silly kills!
We get bored.
Roth has one trick, and has refused to move on from the past. Whilst this is admirable with Judas Priest or "John Wick" movies; it flounders here, lost in the hope of scandal and the aspirations of shock value. When there are more interesting horror films with shocking moments sure to wag tongues and spark discussion ("Titane", "Talk to Me", "Bring Her Back", "Obsession", "Barbarian", "Cuckoo", "Weapons", "The Substance" all come to mind) in the last few years alone, even the more "traditional" horror, slasher, comedy or bloodbath fare released as of late has used gore and a welcome renaissance of bloodbaths to be entertaining, even when aiming for the splash zone of the cheap seats ("Terrifier", its sequels, "The Monkey", "Primate", "Dangerous Animals", "Clown in a Cornfield", "Ready or Not" and its sequel, the last two "Evil Dead" entries, even the excellent remake of "The Toxic Avenger" and the Radio Silence "Scream" movies, a series I am not fond of) do so wth flair, style, panache and a gleeful sense of filmmaking prowess. Gore has crept back into mainstream fare after bloated, ghoulish studios were reticent to allow any of it, with things such as "Deadpool", even when it seems out of place and empty, aping the gory efforts of better movies in the mistaken belief that gore is what made them good ("Death of a Unicorn", "Infinity Pool", "Lee Cronin's: The Mummy" and "Love Hurts" spring to mind), so maybe we can thank he and "The Splat Pack" for opening the doors there and bringing it back to the mainstream? Even there, however, his contemporaries of that pun have evolved, moved on: Alexandre Aja took weirder swings at higher concept movies like "Crawl" (a solid creature feature) and "Oxygen"; Neil Marshall got butt-fucked by producers on his "Hellboy" remake and went back to making claustrophobic, grimy B-movies he was known for previously (I think he was unfairly pushed into that pack); James Wan brought his adoration of Hammer Horror into the "Insidious" and "Conjuring" movies before shifting to a producer role with Atomic Monster, a billion dollar franchise camp fest in "Aquaman" and what SHOULD have been a multi-billion dollar underrated masterpiece of insanity in "Malignant"; Darren Lynn Bousman finally settled down after the "Saw" movies with the knowledge that people other than he had made a good one in "Saw X", and seems happy to do his own thing. Hell, Ti West who took over the reigns of his series with the far superior "Cabin Fever 2" has been a reliable, exceedingly interesting filmmaker and indie horror darling of that period intersecting with people like AJ Bowen, Adam Wingard, Joe Swanberg and Simon Barrett ("Azrael" is good) in the horror scene, supporting each other.
Roth plays his opening salvo of child bloodbaths too early. After that he flounders. this may have worked as a short, or a Grindhouse style trailer. He has little to add to the table, he's a man running out of rope and of time. He had gore, and gore was accepted, nothing interesting good be bred from this premise.
He used to support filmmakers and artists, and part of the thrill and point of a lower budget gore piece with a twisted sense of humour is to get creative, work around limitations and keep your film fun and interesting to a more forgiving crowd:
So he decide to use generative A.I, sorry, plagiarism software instead.
It's a stumbling, empty, weak and limp attempt to recapture a glory day which was never that glorious to begin with.
Eli Roth has lost that touch he had, because the world it seemed so magical to has moved on, it's progressed to better art and a more open idea of what horror can and should be. It's starting to come around to the thinking of his contemporaries and his defenders.
It's a shame he never moved with it.
He chose to stop making art, with his A.I apologism, but even without that (and it CANNOT be ignored): it's weak.
The world left him behind, and it doesn't need him anymore.
I don't hate Roth, I don't even find the energy to be disappointed in this tragedy.
I hope he makes art again.
