The Toxic Avenger Movie Review – This Is the Cinema That Scorsese Preaches About

Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger – a remake of the Troma classic – isn’t for everyone. Actually, it’ll appeal to less than 5% of the world’s population. The mere fact it receives such a high score here is likely to result in me getting angry mails from the valiant online fedora tippers who question my film criticism skills. Well, what can I say? To quote Martin Scorsese, this is absolute C-I-N-E-M-A.

This isn’t a straight-up rehash of Lloyd Kaufman’s The Toxic Avenger. In Blair’s version, Peter Dinklage plays Winston Gooze, a janitor at the BTH corporation. Winston receives bad news about his health, and the company’s medical scheme refuses to cover his treatment plan (surprise, surprise), so he approaches BTH big shot Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) for assistance. After Bob agrees to help, then does the good ol’ CEO thing of backtracking and being an all-round dirty sphincter, Winston decides to rob BTH for the necessary money.

At this point, Winston is desperate since he’s also responsible for looking after his deceased girlfriend’s young son, Wade (Jacob Tremblay). Unfortunately, Winston gets caught at the wrong place at the wrong time by the horrorcore assassins Killer Nutz and suffers a toxic accident. He rises from this as the Toxic Avenger, reborn with radioactive powers, and fights back against all those who wronged him. Cue the John Williams score. Just joking – this movie’s entire budget is just Williams’ deposit.

In a recent interview with The Direct, Blair compared The Toxic Avenger to “a live-action cartoon,” and that encapsulates the movie in a nutshell. Especially in terms of the cinematography choices, as well as the sound and costume design. However, I’d add that it’s an R-rated live-action cartoon rather than a kid-friendly one like Toxic Crusaders, because there’s a lot of gore and splatter that might not go down too well with the younger audience. Like an animated show, this film isn’t afraid to get goofy, outrageous, or downright weird. When the goon squad known as Killer Nutz is a warped merger between Insane Clown Posse and Hollywood Undead, you know you’re in for a sensationally strange time. If that isn’t enough, Dinklage’s Toxie bellows out a hardcore punk track in his final showdown against them, adding to the credence that this art of the highest form.

Look, the plot of The Toxic Avenger hangs by the loneliest of threads, as it barely provides a reason to jump from one gross-out scene to the next, but you can’t help but catch yourself laughing at the absurdity of it all. It’s clear that everyone involved is having a ball, and it’s infectious. Bacon romps along as the delightfully bad Bob Garbringer, Elijah Wood quietly steals the show as Fritz Garbinger, and Dinklage is nothing but charisma and magnetism as Winston/Toxie (special credit also needs to go to Luisa Guerreiro who plays the physical role of Toxie and creates a sizzling synergy with Dinklage’s own performance).

What stands out most about The Toxic Avenger, though, is the bravery of Blair and his collaborators to make a daring and off-kilter film. We’re living in the age of algorithms and AI slop, where all these Hollywood halfwits want to create formulaic “content” for the masses, but in The Toxic Avenger, we have creatives who prove the uncaged spirit of art is still alive and well in the world. You don’t have to like the movie, but you can respect the fact that it chooses to dance to the beat of its own double-bass drum. If being original is toxic, pour another cup of radioactive goo and embrace the toxicity.

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