Horror filmmaker Eli Roth, known for Hostel, Cabin Fever and The Green Inferno, is in hot water following reports that his latest gory horror flick, Ice Cream Man, has fallen to the growing and concerning rampage of AI used in filmmaking.
Ice Cream Man is the filmmaker’s twelfth film following 2024’s Borderlands and centres on the grizzly tale of an ice cream man unleashing a reign of terror and murders on a suburban town after he uses cursed sweet treats to turn the local children into bloodthirsty killers. The film features the cast of Ari Millen, Charlie Zeltzer, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Sarah Abbott, and Benjamin Byron Davis, and is already generating scathing reviews for its plot and shock factor, with Roth being a familiar face in the accused ‘low-brow’ splatter horror genre.
And now more heavy criticism is on the way.
Recent reports have broken concerning Ice Cream Man showcasing visual effects provided by the AI company Dark Half, reportedly present in a sequence involving a clip sent to all the children’s phones, inspired by Fleischer Studios, which manipulates them into becoming savage killers, with critics and social media users sending out call-outs and attacks in response.
“Art belongs to HUMANS with EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS“, a top reply to DiscussingFilm’s post on the matter stated. “We will not be watching that slop.” Another reply asked, “How is getting a machine to make slop imagery considered ‘creativity?” while one X user wrote, “Nothing says creative passion quite like letting a computer algorithm do half the work.”
A previous sit-down with Polygon saw the director confirm he had created the sequence himself by using 1920’s Mickey Mouse cartoon-style frames as a foundation, which he then handed to animators to “help kind of make it a little more fluid,” hoping the artists could then “give it a bit of an old-timey jittery feel”.
Upon confirmation that AI was used, Roth submitted a statement to diffuse any backlash regarding the matter.
“I misspoke. AI was used in a very small portion of a few scenes in the film,” the director stated. “It was an opportunity where technology and creativity came together to help bring my vision for the film to life.”
There is yet to be a direct confirmation of which sequences were created using AI and to exactly what extent, yet Roth attempted further peacemaking by affirming audiences will only have to deal with “a very small portion of a few scenes” used with Artificial Intelligence.
Ice Cream Man is in cinemas on 4th August.
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