The Toxic Avenger (2025) Review: Non-Toxic Crusader
Director Macon Blair is an obvious Troma fan, but his Avenger plays it curiously safe
When I first saw the poster for Troma films' 1984 The Toxic Avenger, it made a big impression on me, mainly because of the warning at the bottom that due to the film's graphic nature, nobody under 17 would be admitted. I was used to censorship in Ireland, but in America, you were supposed to be able to see anything with parental permission. How bad must this movie be to be age restricted in America? A few years later, I rented the video and found out. I had to laugh at the sheer audacity: kids being killed by the villains, criminals disemboweled by the hero, and a camera that never pulled or cut away from nudity and gore. I was furious when I bought a copy labeled”unrated” at the local Roses and it was chopped to bits, with Toxie, for example, punching the evil mayor in the stomach rather than ripping out his entrails.
“Let's see if you have any guts!” was his superhero one-liner in that scene. I figured the remake would have to have some, in many ways. Despite a warm reception at Fantastic Fest two years ago, it's been on the shelf for a while, allegedly deemed unreleasable for its graphic content, until Cineverse, which made big bucks from Terrifier 2 being unrated, stepped up to distribute it for Legendary.
The buzz might make William Castle proud, but while there are some fun gore effects in the film, you've seen shortened versions of most of them in the red band trailer already. Terrifier, this is not. I have no doubt that writer-director Macon Blair is a Toxic Avenger fan, and the Troma in-jokes aplenty should please all others. This, however, is not what I would consider a true Toxic Avenger movie.
The Toxic Avenger of 1984, fundamentally, was a (satirical) slasher/revenge movie. The 2025 version is a corporate espionage comedy with some gore. It's perhaps closer to the Toxic Crusaders action figure by Playmates, and subsequent spin-off cartoon, which made Toxie smaller and crouch-ier (like all Playmates figures), turned him green instead of brown, and had him as a kid-friendly (albeit gross) superhero. O.G. Toxie felt compelled to do extreme violence to anyone that his “tromatons” sensed was a villain; nu-Toxie, after an initial explosion of violence, semi-renounces killing – he wants to be a good stepdad and role model, while the prior Toxie mainly wanted to fuck his blind girlfriend and crush enemy heads.
They are completely different characters, of course. 1984's Toxie was a nerd named Melvin Ferd, victim of a vicious an a humiliating prank that led him to try and commit suicide by jumping out the window into a vat of radioactive waste. 2025 Toxie is Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), a janitor who's gotten cancer from working for a toxic drug company. Caught in the middle of a scheme to bring his employers down, he's collateral damage when he falls into toxic chemicals.
Oddly, the name Melvin Ferd has been retained here, but now as the name of an investigative reporter. Bozo, the name of his arch-enemy in the original film, is now an older nickname for Kevin Bacon's evil CEO Bob Garbinger. It's not clear why they're being re-used out of context, except as in-jokes – more fun are the revised place names of St. Roman's Village (take out some letters and it becomes “Tromaville”) and the local school New Chem High (“Nuke 'Em High,” another Troma franchise involving toxic waste). The New York skyline artwork that begins every Troma movie is repurposed here as the backdrop of a local TV news show, the Poultrygeist chicken imagery abounds, and there's a general Mad magazine-type humor that's similar enough to Lloyd Kaufman's comedic sensibility (albeit more PC; Kaufman took, and continues to take, shots at everyone, on all sides, while this movie has easy villains and obvious heroes). In an oddly prophetic touch, some of the noxious criminals are homicidally angry about a national restaurant chain altering its logo and mascot.
Troma films shoot on the cheap, but this remake attempts to maintain the “Tromaville” look on a bigger budget, which it does successfully. Rather than rejecting the low-budget aesthetic choices outright, it imagines that the '80s production design borne of necessity was actually an attempt at world-building which can be expanded. Despite being green and smaller, Toxie's costume is way better, like Rat Fink crossed with a Ninja Turtle. Toxie suit actor Luisa Guerreiro is especially impressive in it, capturing Dinklage's body language and expressiveness to match his voice completely. In the villain role, Kevin Bacon unfortunately recalls his better version of this character in James Gunn's Super, a funnier and more twisted superhero statement from an actual Troma alum.
Blair may be determined to think he's as twisted as Gunn in unrated mode, but he's too nice. Imagine a Toxic Avenger's son twisted enough to think his dad's gory kills were cool...now put that thought away, since that's not this movie, where Winston is morally lectured by his kid, wants to be the good father figure, and finally succeeds when he's in monster form, which gives him the power to stand up to bullies. I know we're not supposed to talk about the appeal of boobs in movies, but nudity and sex were always front and center in Troma movies – here, three randos flash the camera, and that's it. There's a blind woman, but she and Toxie barely talk, let alone fuck. Nobody good is seriously threatened with nasty harm, except as a fake-out. Art the Clown would be bored.
I can't exactly call this a bad Toxie movie, since it's self-evidently better acted than all four of the originals. But I can say it's not everything I came to see in a Toxie movie. Gore aside, why does it still feel so safe, for such an ostensibly dangerous film? Maybe Blair felt like he was getting away with something when he made it, but I don't feel while watching it that anyone's taking a potentially cancellable risk. And I think I should; there's nothing here that 's akin to what Vicki does with glass in Terrifier 3, or what Art does to a penis. Lloyd Kaufman may never have made a movie look this pretty, but Macon Blair has yet to make me feel remotely dirty. The most controversial scene in the entire movie, judging by what the people who made it say, is one where Toxie urinates acid on his titanium restraints. Really? That all?
Stay through the credits for a wonderfully, pointlessly random bonus scene that strikes the right balance. Then wonder why the movie itself was so randomly different.
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The Toxic Avenger opens in theaters Friday. All images courtesy of Yana Blajeva/Legendary Pictures