Of Course Eli Roth Used AI For His Terrible New Film

There are some filmmakers whose embrace of generative AI has been a shock, and the there are those whose admittance was met with the response of, “Yeah, that checks out.” I’m sure some dodgy prediction market somewhere had bets running on whether or not Eli Roth would admit to being an AI bro. That was a safer win than betting on the setting of the sun.

Roth’s new film, Ice Cream Man, is a remake of a schlocky horror starring Clint Howard. For his new masterpiece, he included a scene with Fleischer Studios-style animation. Roth initially told Polygon that he “drew it” and “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. But I sat there and I drew out the frames that I wanted.” That doesn’t seem to be entirely accurate. The film’s credits include a mention of Dark Half, an AI visual effects company. Confronted with this, Roth issued a statement to Polygon to clarify his original remarks. “AI was used in a very small portion of a few scenes in the film,” he said. “It was an opportunity where technology and creativity came together to help bring my vision for the film to life.”

Loser behaviour.

It is, admittedly, a bit odd that a guy who has long prized himself on his embrace of practical horror effects would embrace the plagiarism machine, but it’s also Eli Roth and he sucks. According to critics who have seen Ice Cream Man, the AI use is pretty frequent and extremely obvious. It looks like crap. There’s no way that Roth wasn’t aware of his core fanbase’s contempt for AI and its takeover of the genre. Horror fans don’t even like CGI blood made by VFX artists. Why would they settle for the AI slop version?

The reviews, by the way, seem to be far more entertaining than the film itself. The Guardian gave it one star and said, “The whole thing is made with the swaggering confidence of someone whose friends laugh at his every joke - and the haphazard efficiency of someone who needs to get product to the marketplace for strategic Q3 growth.” Wrote IGN, “It’s cheap rather than clever, cumbersome rather than campy, and ultimately just oddly empty.” Slant Magazine said, “Eli Roth aims for social commentary in the homestretch, but if the moment doesn’t feel satisfyingly nihilistic, that’s because his stab at building out the story has all the consistency of soft serve.”

Ice Cream Man? More like I Scream Because I’m Not Watching That Crap, Man. I’ll workshop that one.