In the quiet coastal town of Bayleen Bay, a little league game ends in heartbreak for Jared Mayfair [Charlie Zeltzer], whose team loses when he falls just short of the win. His older sister, Lizzie [Sarah Abbott], steps in to save him from a brewing misfortune, taking his ice cream so he won’t get sick later. The tension between the siblings is soothed only briefly as they wander the neighborhood in search of normalcy, passing by a truck that will soon cast a far darker shadow over their town: the Ice Cream Man [Ari Millen], who hands out his own brand of treats with unsettling cheer.
Jared, ever alert, notices a creepy jingle on his phone—an ominous hint that something is very wrong. Outside, Lizzie runs into her ex-boyfriend Chris [Dylan Hawco], a meeting that feels out of place in the growing sense of unease. They later swing by the home of Jared’s best friend Elliot [Luke Dietz], only to learn that Elliot is mysteriously sick. A tense moment with a bully named Sebastian disrupts the fragile sense of safety, and the family dinner later that night with their parents, Marty [Eli Roth] and Alison [Karen Cliche], both lawyers like Jared’s grandfather Milton, does little to calm the creeping dread in the neighborhood.
That night, the Ice Cream Man’s truck rolls through the streets, and something in the treats unlocks a savage fervor in the children who ate them. A girl named Piper [Charlie Storey] witnesses a horrifying unraveling, sawing her mom’s head off while her brother obliterates their dad with a basketball. Another brother and sister brutally drill into their father’s skull, and a boy who once bullied Jared enacts a deadly prank on his family with a terrifying display of power. The town’s parents, including Elliot’s, meet grisly fates as the ice cream seems to bend the children’s will toward violent excess.
The following day at school, the majority of the kids drift deeper into the trance, leaving Jared and a few classmates—Mia [Kiori Mirza Waldman] and Tommy (a classmate whose actor isn’t listed in the provided cast)—unaffected for the moment. The Ice Cream Man’s jingle returns, pulling the rest of the students from classrooms to the streets where the carnage escalates: a student plunges from a roof and a teacher is overwhelmed and killed in a brutal, almost casual display of brutality. The authorities—police and firefighters—arrive only to be overwhelmed by the now-demonic children. Those not under the spell are forced to eat, joining the ranks of the afflicted.
Jared reaches out to Lizzie, but her arms have gone numb and she struggles to move. He urges her to vomit the ice cream, a move Mia successfully mirrored, which helps Lizzie regain some sensation. With fear and determination, Lizzie directs Jared toward a nearby church’s basement, where the pair eventually reunite with Mia and Tommy, attempting to survive the chaos.
Inside the church basement, they collide with a Preacher [Benjamin Byron Davis], who explains the grim history behind the Ice Cream Man. The man known as Jonathan Smiley was just an ordinary ice cream vendor until he was accused of unspeakable crimes; a shady lawyer—referred to in the tale as Jared’s grandfather Milton—convinced the town to testify against Smiley, sending him to prison for life. In prison, Smiley encountered a necromancer who offered vengeance in exchange for his soul. Smiley agreed, and he unleashed a plan that linked his fate to the kids in Bayleen Bay, turning those children into adult vessels who would do his bidding as they grew.
To end Smiley’s reign of terror, the kids must confront the necromancer and a companion siren who accompany him. The trio—Jared, Mia, and Tommy—seek out Smiley’s grave, hoping to break the spell. They discover it is an unmarked grave, and their mission becomes a perilous scavenger hunt through the town’s dead ends and hidden corners. As they uncover two bodies in the grave—one believed to be the necromancer and one the siren—their attempts to free themselves lead to a terrifying realization: they have killed their own parents, not their tormentors. Jared clutches his father’s head; Lizzie’s anguished wail echoes as her mother’s body is revealed. The Preacher’s true identity as the necromancer becomes clear, turning the surviving children into literal instruments of his revenge.
With the necromancer exposed and the town undone, Smiley drives away, a trail of ruin behind him as Bayleen Bay lies shattered. The possessed children, now under his influence, chase after the Ice Cream Man’s truck, determined to complete their dark mission and forever leave their mark on the town.
The story unfolds as a chilling look at how fear, manipulation, and vengeance can bend a community into something unrecognizable, even as a brother and sister cling to each other in a last, desperate bid to survive. The Ice Cream Man’s malevolent brand of carnival horror binds together a family’s past and a town’s nightmares, forcing every survivor to weigh how far they would go to save the ones they love.
