The Toxic Avenger had a long, winding road to a theatrical release. Originally filmed in 2021, the movie premiered on the festival circuit in 2023 but never got picked up for a wider release. It took four years before Cineverse acquired the film to be released unrated, but it is finally here.
If you take the team behind this movie at their word, this was mostly due to distributors struggling with the violent content. But watching the final product, it is hard to understand where exactly all of this shock and awe came from.
The film, directed by Macon Blair, stars Peter Dinklage as Winston Gooze, a janitor at a shadowy health supply company’s headquarters who is thrown into a river of toxic waste and turned into a grotesque, powerful mutant vigilante.
Dinklage performs as Winston and voices the Toxic Avenger, while Luisa Guerreiro performs as the mutant in a practical effects suit. They are joined by Jacob Tremblay as Winston’s son, Kevin Bacon as the CEO of the company, Taylour Paige as an environmental activist, and Elijah Wood as Bacon’s brother, the manager of a hardcore band called Killer Nutz. These characters all collide in a spectacle-driven, anti-corporate, environmentalist thrash as the Toxic Avenger roots out the evil in their small New Jersey town.
While the film promises to deliver on all things blood and guts, the biggest failing of The Toxic Avenger is that it is simply not gnarly enough. There are a few great bits of practical effects in the creature department. Toxie, as the public affectionately calls him, looks remarkable. But the kills are where it counts, and they do not deliver here.
The original 1984 feature that served as the basis for this remake sees the Toxic Avenger on a vengeful tear through the degenerate criminals of Tromaville. Bones are broken, faces are burned, limbs are torn, etc. This film has all of that, but it feels weightless because nearly every instance of violence is caked over with a glossy CGI finish.
The post-production effects are so gratuitous that it is hard to see if there even were any practical effects underneath much of the carnage. For a film that wears its “Unrated” status as a badge of honor, it is disappointing to see the gore barely reach the heights of your average episode of Prime Video’s The Boys.
A Troma homage demands a hard edge, and this film just doesn’t have it. There is more care put into absurdist comedy, which will play exceptionally well in a crowded theater. There are moments of broad political satire that take aim at the right-wing obsession with culture-warifying even the most mundane news items.
Despite the film being made years ago, a fast food restaurant hostage situation in The Toxic Avenger feels incredibly of-the-moment considering the national unraveling over Cracker Barrell’s recent logo change. The film also intersperses TV news segments that evoke RoboCop’s expository news broadcasts. These sections play well in building the world of St. Roma’s Village (a town name that appears to read TROMAVILLE on the many worn out street signs) as a grimy, rundown dump in need of a hero.
The comedy and the dramatic storytelling take precedent over the darker aspects of Troma’s house style, which are more or less abandoned in this film. The original Toxic Avenger is a mean movie to the bone. This one is far more sentimental and hesitant to depict any real brutality, only the cartoonishly excessive violence that may shock the unaccustomed viewer but will bounce right off of any seasoned horror fans.
The attempt at making Toxic Avenger work as both a comedy, a hyper-violent splatter film, and a sincere story about unlikely heroes fighting to save their town leaves this remake messy and tonally mismatched. Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon both have a strong hold on what the tone of the film should be, and there are a couple of scenes that really go full-tilt into that absurdist zone. But the rest feels unfocused.
It is admirable that Blair and the filmmaking team fought so hard to get this in theaters. Their love of the Troma films of the past is very evident, but Toxic Avenger never makes the case that it could stand alongside those movies.
5 out of 10
The Toxic Avenger is in theaters now.
This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2025.