Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man (Collector's Edition Steelbook) (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) Mill Creek Entertainment, Horror, Thriller

In the idyllic seaside community of Bayleen Bay, life is simple, blissful even… at least until the Ice Cream Man rolls ominously into town. When this mysterious peddler of frozen sweet treats arrives in his colorful truck one sunny summer’s day, an otherworldly jingle emanating from the eerie mascot perched on its roof, the local kids are all hypnotized – first by its seemingly delicious contents, later by the evil malevolence that lurks within them. Perhaps everyone should have paid more attention to the sign on the vintage vehicle’s back fender: Watch Out For Children. Because that night, Bayleen Bay’s youngsters turn into a murderous, feral pack, dispatching their parents in inventively gruesome and outlandishly sadistic ways, all the while with sinister smiles playing out across their sprinkles-flecked faces. Only the lactose-intolerant 12-year-old Jared and the small group of others who similarly didn’t succumb to the temptation of the Ice Cream Man’s deadly wares remain immune to their uncontrollable, homicidal grip. Next morning, unaware of the overnight carnage, Jared and his uninfected classmates, Mia and Tommy, along with his big sister Lizzie and her ex-boyfriend Chris, awake to what they think is going to be a regular day, only to encounter one whose horrors they will never be able to forget. And that’s if they’re lucky enough to survive it and escape the clutches of the horde of bloodthirsty peers, led now by 10-year-old Piper and somehow spellbound by the ever-smiling Ice Cream Man, who want to convert them to their ruthless, unspoken cause. Can our young heroes outlive the madness that has descended upon them? As the adults fall one by one, savaged and sawn up by the previously innocent Piper and her band of merrily psychopathic pals, the odds seem stacked against them. And when the slaughter spills out onto the once peaceful streets and Jared and his friends’ schoolteachers find themselves ferociously attacked by the pupils who once listened to them, now gleefully playing jump-rope with their intestines, tag with their severed hands and dishing out their brains for their fellow classmates to munch on from an ancient ice cream scoop covered in arcane symbols, the clock is ticking for them to discover who the unspeaking menace that is the Ice Cream Man actually is, quite what he wants – and whether they can find a way to stop him. In Eli Roth’s extraordinarily gore-soaked, magnificently outrageous 10th movie as director, the acclaimed master of mayhem is set to take the bravest international audiences on a riotous rampage that truly has to be seen to be believed, loaded as it is with an array of the most ingeniously grisly, stomach-churningly brutal imagery he has ever committed to film. And, in the titular Ice Cream Man himself (played by 12 Monkeys and Orphan Black’s Ari Millen), Roth is about to introduce the world to an instant new horror icon, one who will soon proudly take his gore-soaked place alongside Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Pinhead and Candyman as one of the genre’s all-time most unforgettable killers.

• Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man (Collector's Edition Steelbook) (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) Mill Creek Entertainment, Horror, Thriller
• Not Rated
• Directed By Eli Roth