We’re really doing this, huh? The de facto mascot of freaking Troma is getting a modern reboot with an all-star cast. I’m not entirely sure how or why this happened, but let’s roll with it.

For the unfamiliar, Troma was founded in 1974 by schlock cinema grandmaster Lloyd Kaufman and his business partner Michael Herz (analogous to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, if that helps), and it remains the longest-running indie cinema studio in operation. The studio name is practically shorthand for irreverent shoestring-budget movies loaded with gore and tits.

(Side note: By chance, I had the pleasure of briefly crossing paths with Kaufman once, in the hallowed halls of Movie Madness. He was touring the place with his wife, stopping every 30 seconds to gleefully point out some movie or museum piece. To me, he’ll always be a sweet little old man who loves movies almost as much as he loves his wife.)

Arguably the most iconic Troma creation is “Toxie”, the Toxic Avenger, who debuted in 1984 with his namesake film, directed by Kaufman and Herz themselves. The character started out as Melvin Ferd (played by Mark Torgl until he mutated into Mitch Cohen under heavy prosthetics), a scrawny and hapless bully target who fell into a barrel of toxic chemicals and mutated into a hideously malformed superhero.

Considering the film was made before the superhero genre really took off in 1989 with the Tim Burton Batman movie (the classic Richard Donner Superman of 1978 notwithstanding), such a parody of the genre was remarkably ahead of its time. Funny enough, the next two entries in the Toxic Avenger series were both released in 1989. And the fourth film came out in October of 2000, smack in between X-Men and Spider-Man. The franchise has been dormant ever since.

I find it so bizarre that such an iconic superhero parody was most active in that period between Batman and Spider-Man. The X-Men/Spider-Man combo was what launched superhero cinema as we know it today, culminating in Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking Dark Knight trilogy and the birth of the MCU, all the way through the historic Infinity Saga. It’s strange how there was no place for the Toxic Avenger in the 25 years when superhero cinema kept reaching new heights. Then again, I suppose there was no shortage of other cinematic superhero send-ups in that same time frame (see: Kick-Ass, Watchmen, Super, Brightburn, Hancock, the Deadpool movies, etc.).

At any rate, there have been discussions of a Toxic Avenger reboot going all the way back to 2010. The one to finally get over the finish line was — of all people — writer/director/producer Macon Blair, whose previous work in acting, writing, and directing could best be described as “scattershot”. I can’t make heads or tails out of his filmography, except to say there’s no reason why anyone in the mainstream would know about him. Yet his love and knowledge of Troma was enough to impress Kaufman, and he somehow got Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood, Kevin Bacon, and Jacob Tremblay into the finished product, so here we are.

To get this out of the way, there is no Melvin Ferd this time. We do, however, get one Mel Ferd (Shaun Dooley), an investigative reporter killed off in the prologue. He was tasked with trying to take down BTH, a sleazy pharmaceutical company that turns the environment rancid while pumping out carcinogenic snake oil products. I’m not exactly clear on why a journalist had to work so hard to expose the company’s secrets when it’s well-known that the company is an ecological nightmare, their products don’t work, and the company is going bankrupt as a direct result. But I guess Mel’s gotta write something, so whatever.

Anyway, our protagonist this time is named Winston Gooze (Dinklage), a janitor at BTH. He’s also mourning the death of his girlfriend and raising her son (Wade, played by Tremblay), so that’s an awkward and heartbreaking situation. On top of all that, Winston has recently been diagnosed with some unspecified brain disease and given roughly a year left to live.

What we’ve got here is a guy who means well, he’s trying his best, he’s doing everything right, and the whole world keeps shitting on him. The head of his company (Bob Garbinger, played by Bacon) is a corrupt shitheel who built his brand around better health for everyone, but he won’t lift a finger to help his own employees. Thus Winston gets stuck with health insurance that screws him over right when he most desperately needs life-saving treatment.

At its heart and core, the spirit of the original is there. Our hero starts out as a poor schmuck whom everyone else makes fun of and he can’t get ahead no matter what he does. The difference is that while Melvin was consistently played for laughs, there’s a quiet underlying dignity to Winston. He tries to take responsibility for a kid that isn’t even his own, which is a noble emotional hook like Melvin never got. Even better, there’s a sweet moment in the first act that shows Winston really is making a positive impact, even if his actions are too small for Winston himself to acknowledge or appreciate.

I need hardly add that in the original, Melvin’s antagonists were nothing more than one-dimensional bullies. Granted, one of those one-dimensional bullies was the mayor. Even so, the antagonists this time represent something much bigger than City Hall. Garbinger doesn’t just represent any one local government or law enforcement agency, he’s a stand-in for the entire late-stage capitalist system that’s destroying the planet and killing people for the sake of his own fleeting short-term gains.

Anyway, long story short, another BTH employee (J.J. Doherty, played by Taylour Paige) is on the run because she’s trying to find and deliver enough evidence to take down BTH. (Again, why is that so necessary or so fucking hard?!) Thus Garbinger commissions his black sheep brother (Fritz, played by Elijah Wood), who in turn commissions a motley monstercore band called the Killer Nutz, to find and kill J.J. Winston gets caught in the crossfire, gets dunked in toxic waste, and thus we have our superhero. (Luisa Guerreiro wears the prosthetic suit, with Dinklage dubbing the dialogue in post.)

So, what kind of powers does our superhero have? Well, in addition to his superhuman strength, he’s got a powerful healing factor. Not that he’s exactly bulletproof per se, but getting shot means a lot of pain and some gnarly prosthetic effects before he gets better. I might further add that his bodily fluids are now highly acidic, which makes for quite the piss joke near the climax.

But of course his real power is in his mop, now soaked with caustic acid and capable of instantly vaporizing pretty much anything it touches. Naturally, this translates into some spectacularly bloody and fucked-up kills. There is, however, a significant drawback. Consider how many villains we get in this movie.

• In addition to Bob Garbinger and his brother Fritz, Bob’s assistant (Kissy, played by Julia Davis) gets promoted to villain status in the third act.
• We’ve got the Killer Nutz, comprised of five members with their own individual gimmicks.
• There’s Thad Barkabus (Jonny Coyne), the mob boss bankrolling BTH, and his weaselly little son (Spence, played by Abraham Lewis).
• And then we’ve got the Nasty Lads, four militant terrorists made to be a mocking parody of the alt-right.

In terms of volume and composition, this in itself is practically an entire rogues’ gallery. By the standards of any other superhero franchise, cramming so many villains into one movie would be overkill. If these bad guys were all given their proper due, we’d have enough material to fill a five-episode streaming miniseries at least.

Here’s the problem: Our hero has a mop that can instantly turn anyone into a fine red mist. The kills in this movie are like fireworks: Spectacular fun to watch for the five seconds they last. Thus the film needs so many bad guys so we can keep the kills coming. Which in turn means that some bad guys are killed off before their full potential can be tapped, and others are instantly and effortlessly vaporized after so much time and effort hyping them up.

On the other hand, it’s not like anyone came to see this movie for the plot. And while the gore effects are a crucial selling point, they’re not what saves this movie either. What really makes this movie is the sense of humor.

What we’ve got here is a movie with the same over-the-top, gross-out, wildly irreverent and self-aware humor of the original film, ramped up to the scale of 21st century excess. So it’s like Deadpool? No. For all its wickedly crude sensibilities, the Deadpool films were nonetheless spit-shined corporate products rooted in a deep love for the Marvel brand. Not here.

Rather, this is a film that uses the language of modern blockbuster superhero cinema to poke fun at the genre while also spitting venom at the status quo of the real world. Granted, it’s not like the film has much of anything intelligent to say, or any kind of practical solution to offer. Then again, in a world ruled and shaped by such massive egos, maybe it’s enough simply to show the PTB as braindead bullies and ask why the nine blue blazing hells we keep letting them get away with failure and malfeasance.

There’s a strong populist streak in this movie, most especially shown in how Toxie is repeatedly held up as a folk hero. But even then, the film tempers that statement by clearly showing how mob mentality can lead us all to jump to the wrong conclusions and cause errant harm. Cut to the third act, when Toxie is shown harnessing that same mob mentality toward a positive end.

The people in this city are gullible idiots, is what I’m saying. Then again, that was just as true in the original film.

More importantly, while the film is most entertaining when it’s going full-throttle over-the-top, it’s most endearing and enlightening in those times when it slows down. This is most clearly seen in the character of Wade, played by Tremblay with straight-faced sincerity throughout the entire movie. He’s got nervous tics, he’s got teenage social anxiety, and he’s mourning the loss of both his parents. Wade chides his would-be father figure for not having the courage to stand up to a crooked mogul, but Wade himself doesn’t have the courage to get onstage in front of his peers — it’s a poignant contradiction.

J.J. is likewise portrayed as a three-dimensional character. Even during the more ludicrous jokes and action scenes, she helps bring the movie some much-needed heart, and often makes the jokes funnier by serving as a straight foil. And then of course there’s Peter Dinklage, here delivering what might be his single greatest performance to date. No joke, there are so many layers to everything he’s doing onscreen as Winston and in the recording booth as Toxie, and every last ounce of it sells the humor and the heart of this movie. You would never expect this much pathos in a film that features a radioactive chicken puppet, and yet here we are.

There’s one particular scene in the first act, when Winston finally gets the chance to meet Garbinger in person and beg for help with his medical insurance. I might add that Winston is dressed in a pink tutu under a black jacket and he’s wearing a black domino mask — it’s a long story. Anyway, Bacon plays his character as a transparent sleazeball, chewing the scenery as a dishonest fuckwit who will tell whatever lie it takes to make Winston go away. Opposite him, Dinklage is pouring his heart out, honestly and earnestly professing his love for the job and the company, like nothing could possibly mean more to him or his son than fixing this health insurance problem. The contrast between these two characters in that scene sums up the whole movie: The sincere and the ludicrous collide in such a way that each bolsters the other.

For the miscellaneous notes, the film works beautifully well as a love letter to Troma. Even a Troma novice like me could appreciate all the effort put into cramming in so many Easter Eggs, up to and including the gratuitous Lloyd Kaufman cameo near the end. And I’m sure longtime franchise fans will appreciate all the many and varied ways of using “Night on Bald Mountain”.

Oh, and don’t forget to stick around for the funniest post-credits stinger I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that The Toxic Avenger (2025) won’t be for all tastes. The best we could’ve hoped for was a stupid movie made by intelligent people, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here. This was a film that had to deliver on the gross-out spectacle, exaggerated comedy, superhero parody, and ecological anti-capitalist messaging of the 1984 original, all updated for a 2025 audience in a way that will bring in new fans without alienating the old ones. That was always going to be a mighty tall order for any one movie, and this one succeeded on all fronts as well as — hell, probably even better than — anyone could’ve reasonably expected.

Simply put, the audience for this one was pretty solidly baked in from the outset. You’re either the kind of filmgoer who would enjoy a new Toxic Avenger movie or you’re not, and you don’t need me to tell which one you are. All I can say is that if you were hoping this movie wouldn’t suck, rest assured it doesn’t. If you’ve heard of Troma or Toxic Avenger and you haven’t gotten around to seeing the original yet, here’s where you jump on.