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Thursday, July 8, 2010

Review: We All Scream For Ice Cream (2007)

Director: Tom Holland
Starring: KILLER ICE CREAM!

One thing I never thought I would ever see is a movie that makes me not want to eat ice cream, but here we have one anyway. We All Scream for Ice Cream is one of the Masters of Horror series, this time the contribution of Tom Holland, director of Child’s Play and Fright Night. It’s adapted from a short story, apparently, and the plot is going to sound weird: A clown who was killed by a bunch of kids has come back years later when they are adults to give their children ice cream, and when the children eat it, the parents melt into ice cream themselves. And trust me; I’m not smoking anything, that’s really what it’s about.

This movie isn’t really great, and there are several plot holes, like…how did the kids keep it a secret for so long that they killed the clown? They did it by pulling the gear and rolling it backwards, where he happened to be standing and picking up change. It was in broad daylight; how the hell did nobody notice? How did the police never interrogate any of the other kids there and find out who did it? And for that matter, what kind of a revenge is turning the parents into ice cream? Whatever happened to just killing them with an ax or something; seems like that would be easier…

So aside from those holes…the acting is kind of mediocre, the effects are gross-out good and kind of cool, and the story is just plain weird, weird, weird. One of my main complaints is that the characters aren’t that well fleshed out, and so the story loses tension for that. It would be a much stronger film if we could care more about the characters – but in this movie many of them are killed off before we even know their name. I really like the suburban setting of this flick, as I find it usually always works in horror movies, and I always love a good creepy clown, but sadly it isn’t as played up as it could have been.

Am I really arguing logic in a movie that has people turning into melted ice cream? I don’t know about you, but I think I’m cracking up here…I don’t hate We All Scream for Ice Cream, but it could use improvement. In the genre of…people-to-ice-cream thrillers…you could do much better. Like Killer Klowns From Outer Space! Now there's a classy flick about people turning into sugary sweet desserts by the hands of murderous clowns! I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of this genre.

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