A sequence in Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man recreates the set-piece from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) in which Tippi Hedren sits outside a school and smokes, with singing children on the soundtrack, not noticing birds gathering on a climbing frame behind her. The joke is that instead of birds, the frame is occupied by its supposedly natural inhabitants – children. Even setting aside Weapons (2025), Ice Cream Man – not to be confused with the 1995 slasher movie starring Clint Howard – has many, many precedents in turning children into murderous menaces. These are confrontational, disturbing films – violent children, like horror comics, have generally been a triggering issue for censors. In theory, it’s mind-shattering ultimate horror; in practice, it’s ice cream itself – insubstantial and delicious.