The Toxic Avenger (2025)

The Toxic Avenger is a loving, smartly updated take on the 1984 splatter horror comedy landmark. Where the original was nearly all gore and sex, often for what seemed to be the sake of pure shock value, this film uses that same level of gore and sexual content to help tell a — slightly — deeper story. The cast here, including Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood, are perfectly cast and well utilized. The film, at times, seems to dip into elements of the Wes Craven Swamp Thing. Imagine if the original film and that one had been made today, with a more generous budget, and you begin to understand what we have.

Dinklage plays a janitor, Winston Gooze, who works for an energy drink company that is secretly creating highly toxic and volatile waste, with products that are poisoning the region and consumers. Gooze has a step son that is not happy with his step dad, who refuses to stand up to bullying. Bob Garbinger, the ceo of the company, played by Bacon, is a strange mixture of Blue Blood and New Money sleaze, coming off like a Rockefeller by way of Larry Flynt. His brother, played by Elijah Wood, arranges all the dirty work, mostly using a truly terrible music group he manages — The Killer Nutz — to accomplish these tasks. As the film begins, Mel Ferd, a crusading journalist, is murdered by the Nutz, leaving a single witness, JJ Doherty (Taylour Paige), to seek justice. JJ is also there the night the Nutz shoot and dump Gooze into a vat of waste. Together, they form a team to take down Garbinger and his criminal empire.

Unlike the first film, this one explores in detail more traditional superhero elements, including Gooze’s mop having special powers, and Gooze himself having more than just a tolerance to pain and increased strength. This, in fact, is where the Swamp Thing connections come into play. Garbinger and his wife, at a certain point, take on roles that will remind viewers of the villain of that film, Anton Arcane. This is also a development that comes as little surprise and is clearly where the film is heading toward from the beginning. While the film may not be as brilliantly satirical as it believes it is, it is nonetheless baldy funny and cutting.

This is not a franchise known for subtlety and attempting more than what it does with Gooze and his son’s relationship, would likely ruin an otherwise fine entertainment. The film knows what it is and is never less than clear eyed about that. This is a film that exists in a fractured, decaying, fantasyland version of our world, that may cut a little too close to home for some, and that is the point. The films of Troma are always exceedingly obvious, but that is because they like to cut through all pretense, and this collaboration with Legendary is a fine blend of what each company does best.

Writer/director Macon Blair has a solid grasp of place and is able to create a tone that is both like the original film, yet modern and unique. At times, the film feels like a splatter horror noir. Like the original, he uses a lot of unusual camera angles and speeds, but unlike the original, he never makes the gore the point., and relies on some occasionally evocative shadows Instead, the gore  is a consequence and while the camera occasionally lingers on certain moments of extreme violence, the viewer understands this is not because it is supposed to be “cool” but rather for them to comprehend what they have witnessed. In this sense, beyond all the surface satire of disgruntled miscreants crying at a world that they think is “making them change” the film accomplishes a greater task. Namely, can extreme violence ever be justified and why do we enjoy it as much as we do?