The Toxic Avenger review – genuinely pure, if also puerile, artistic intentions at work

When it comes to superhero movies we are currently in the eye of a hurricane. This summer’s emphatic one-two punch of Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps attracted both good reviews and actual audiences with their widescreen fizziness and lovely pops of colour. 

But it will be almost a year until Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (June 2026) and Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 2026). Perhaps the looming spandex drought is the perfect time for a more unorthodox hero to commandeer the spotlight?

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Enter The Toxic Avenger, a freakish but well-meaning do-gooder who has long been trapped in cheerfully obnoxious movies. His origin story is tragic: a weedy, bullied janitor who is deliberately exposed to toxic waste but somehow survives. Being dunked in radioactive funk melts his skin into lurid green grotesquerie but on the upside he gets Hulk-like super-strength and resilience. If not for Hong Kong Phooey he would easily be the world’s most famous janitor turned superhero.

The original 1984 movie is gaudy, objectionable trash but deliberately so. It was produced by US B-movie specialists Troma Entertainment, enthusiastic celebrators of gloopy gore effects, goofy jokes and gratuitous nudity. Troma is where a young James Gunn – the writer-director of Superman and the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy – cut his teeth as a filmmaker and you can still detect the lingering influence. That dude still loves a good splattery decapitation played for laughs.

Bringing back The Toxic Avenger four decades after his debut would be the perfect time to square off all the vulgar edges, lean into the anti-pollution themes and elevate him from cult curiosity to mass-market proposition. To the credit of the artists behind this resurrection – notably actor-turned-director Macon Blair, who also co-writes the film – they have remained entirely true to the transgressive spirit of the original. It will likely repel as many viewers as it attracts.

Headline star Peter Dinklage admirably commits to the material. His put-upon Winston Gooze has the handlebar ’tache and mullet of a total dirtbag but rapidly reveals himself to just be a nice guy desperate to support his traumatised teen stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay). 

Winston is a low-level custodian for a sketchy “healthstyle empire” headed by the devious Garbinger, an insufferable biohacker tech bro played with gusto by Kevin Bacon. 

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When Winston receives a terrifying diagnosis he summons up the courage to confront Garbinger directly. Surely a would-be medical guru will sort out his insurance? Instead Winston is swept under the carpet – or in this case, dumped into glowing noxious waste – only to reemerge as a powered-up monster with a lethal radioactive mop and a score to settle. (As in the original, our misshapen hero’s musical leitmotif is Mussorgsky’s gothically stirring Night on Bald Mountain.)

That Winston will team up with a whistleblower JJ (Taylour Paige) to protect his stepson and take down Garbinger and his cronies (including Julia Davis as a venal PA and an almost unrecognisable Elijah Wood as a ratty fixer) is a given. 

But the movie is more interested in bombarding its audience with a constant barrage of crude humour, daft gross-out sight gags and the occasional atomic flash of sentimentality.

One of the best jokes in the original was that Toxie’s voice mutated from a nerdy squeak to a rich, deep baritone. In the update, Dinklage provides the voice throughout but post-transformation the Toxie performance is by actor and movement artist Luisa Guerreiro, who manages to retain some physical expressiveness under thick layers of green latex. 

It all adds to the sense that while The Toxic Avenger was clearly put together on a thrifty budget there are some genuinely pure – if also puerile – artistic intentions at work.

Perhaps the best thing would be to put aside comparisons to Superman or The Fantastic Four. The summer 2025 film that would prime you best for The Toxic Avenger is The Naked Gun. If you were on board with the silliness and non sequiturs of that reboot then you are more likely to enjoy its edgier, crasser cousin.

A case in point: Garbinger’s main enforcers are a Slipknot-style rock band in over-the-top outfits, including one member inexplicably dressed as the Zodiac Killer who simply cannot stop doing parkour-style moves and flips. 

It’s a literal running gag, and one so stupid that I couldn’t help but be tickled by it. Maybe you will be too.

The Toxic Avenger is in cinemas from 29 August.

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