MIFF 2025 Film Review - The Toxic Avenger
Images courtesy of Common State.
Though their penchant for low budget, bad taste, and downright exploitative films may not be everyone's cup of tea, it's hard to ignore Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Entertainment’s contributions to our current pop culture landscape. Filmmaking talents like James Gunn, Trey Parker and Matt Stone all cut their teeth on productions for the sleazy cinema provocateurs, with some notable examples including Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (aka possibly the most offensive musical I've ever seen), Surf Nazis Must Die, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, Killer Condom, and Gunn's own mutant menagerie, Tromeo and Juliet. But before they pivoted towards the path of genre films, Troma’s first major hit that had them realise their straight-to-video moneymaking potential was The Toxic Avenger, quietly one of the greatest movies ever made.
Having discovered the original 1984 film while nursing my first hangover at the tender age of 18, you could say Toxie and I have a personal connection. There's something about the strange brew of amateur acting, repugnant dialogue, recycled musical cues, and surprisingly good practical effects and stunts that makes the film hard to truly decipher - is it so bad it's good, is it good at mimicking bad films, or is it just actually unironically perfect?? I'd argue that either way, the end result is a film that capitalises on its entertainment value at every turn, a movie so beyond classification that no matter who I show it to, no matter how much they “hate horror and gore”, I've never witnessed an overwhelmingly negative response to it. The Toxic Avenger is Fun with a capital F, and there's no other thing that truly matters.
Which is why myself and many others in the horror community had such trepidation when it was announced that Macon Blair would be helming a reboot, supposedly steering further into eco-horror territory in an attempt to update Toxie for the modern age. Armed with his trusty mop and a new design that sees the large hulking mass traded in for a Funko Pop goblin, this new Toxic Avenger comes equipped with a studded wristband for that punk rock look, and the anything but pint-sized voice of Peter Dinklage. It's a massive credit to Blair that the redesign works as well as it does, serving viewers a little freak hell-bent on revenge against those responsible for his dip into a vat of toxic waste. Where it doesn't work quite so well is unfortunately the rest of the story, going all-in on the camp to the point where it does come across like it's trying a bit too hard to live up to its cult favourite predecessor.
The characters all range from fine to great, with special mentions going to Elijah Wood as the Igor-like Fritz Garbinger, Peter Dinklage’s physical presence as the pre-toxified Winston Gooze, and Jacob Tremblay as his wavering son, Wayde Gooze. It's just that the story they're placed in suffers from woefully uneven pacing and more misses than hits when it comes to the jokes. Taking a character like the Toxic Avenger and inserting him into a screwball farce seems like the right move on the surface, but playing up the humour when so much of the original is naturally funny does invite comparison and, as much as it pains me to say after years of anticipation, the 2023 remix doesn't quite have the sauce.
Don't get me wrong, seeing it on the gigantic IMAX screen with an absolutely packed festival crowd giddy with excitement was an electric experience in its own right, but the film goes all-in on early YouTube era “random XD” style gags that feel cheap and lazy, and not in a fun way. There are a handful of legitimate belly laughs that I believe make it worth the price of admission - two involving masked members of the in-universe assassin/monstercore band had me in stitches, but the focus on this particular brand of humour feels somewhat wrong-headed. As a result, kills and gore don't come from ratcheting up stakes with inventive setups and payoffs like the cinematic masterpiece that is the original diner scene, and are usually exploded onto retinas with brisk shot-reaction editing.
All of that being said, it is a delight to see The Toxic Avenger uncut and in its full glory after two whole years sitting on the post-festival shelf, and if it also ends up getting more eyes on its ‘84 cousin, I'm all here for it. I can see this cast and direction working excellently given more resources and another chance at the script, so sign me on for 2oxic 2venger.
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The Toxic Avenger screened as part of the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival, and is now screening in cinemas. For more info, click here.