The Toxic Avenger

By Alberto Sclaverano 

Film review

A modern reboot of the 1980s exploitation cult film, has a strong ecological message

In the fictionalized town of St. Roma’s Village, single janitor Winston Gooze (played by Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage) works for the corrupt pharmaceutical company BTH (Body Talk Healthstyle) owned by evil businessman Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon). During the years, BTH has polluted the environment, poisoned the water and the woods around St. Roma’s, and it is linked to organized crime, to the point of resorting to murder to eliminate a journalist who discovered the reality. Terminally ill and fired for this by Garbinger, in a scene that is a parody of the madness of today’s American health insurance system, Winston attempts to steal the money to pay for his cancer therapy from the BTH factory. 

Things go very wrong, and after being thrown by Garbinger’s henchmen in a pool full of toxic waste, he gained superpowers and transforms into the antihero “the Toxic Avenger”, nicknamed “Toxie”, whose goal becomes fighting bad guys and winning back his son's affection. In his mutated form, Winston is played by actress Luisa Guerreiro, hidden under a heavy rubber suit, and voiced by Dinklage himself. 

What follows is a bizarre mix of a superhero-movie parody, a dark comedy, and a strange horror movie, one that’s not scary but that is very gory, even if all the violence is always done in a comedic, absurd way. 

But while laughs and (harmless) disgust are the main things The Toxic Avenger aims for, it should not ignore that this perfect-for-Halloween B-movie contains a message against the greed of corporations and factories that deliberately ignore minimum environmental standards in the name of profit, and by acting this way, severely damage the ecosystem and put people’s lives in danger. 

What the film’s dark satire wants to hit is also the link between the worst part of corporate capitalism and the climate crisis. The same people who often speak highly in public about “doing more” for the Earth and practice various forms of greenwashing whenever it is necessary are the exact persons who, in reality, contribute to the worsening of the climate crisis.

Macon Blair's 2023 take on the 1984 movie of the same name had a very difficult distribution history. Filmed in 2021, completed by 2023 when it was screened in some festivals, it required almost two years to find a proper distributor, and was finally released in the USA and in several other countries between summer and spring 2025. It was originally deemed to be “weird” and “niche-oriented” to have a wide release, and only after independent distributor Cineverse acquired the rights for theatrical release could it finally reach the spectators. 

It is a sort of remake of The Toxic Avenger by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, the film that made the small, New York-based distribution company Troma Entertainment famous. In the following decades, Troma released several movies, including three sequels to The Toxic Avenger, all characterized by being low-budget, heavy on gore, and full of demented humor. 

While staying faithful to some of the ideas of the originals (Kaufman himself is among the producers and has a small cameo), the new film is more polished, less “politically incorrect”, and features a clear pro-environment message, even if delivered in a darkly satirical way.

Very colorful, sometimes grotesque, full of strange characters played by actors happy to have an opportunity to go as over the top as in a comic book, the new The Toxic Avenger is not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, but as a “midnight film,” it works. 

It also brings to the table an effective reflection on the dark side of capitalism, and stresses the importance of reporting industries that pollute the air and water and hold them accountable for their crimes. Using Troma’s traditional dark humor against the people responsible for the destruction of the ecosystem is what makes Macon Blair’s reboot of The Toxic Avenger fresh and funny.