'The Toxic Avenger' review: A cult classic gets a star-studded but sloppy reboot

Courtesy of Cineverse

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Hailing from the ultra-low-budget Troma studio—the same outfit that gave “Superman” director James Gunn his start—the 2025 update of the schlocky splatterfest “The Toxic Avenger” leans into its corny 1980 roots, this time with star wattage the original could have only dreamed about. Peter Dinklage headlines alongside Kevin Bacon, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, and Elijah Wood, who looks like he’s cosplaying as Danny DeVito’s Penguin from “Batman Returns.”

The original cult classic followed a down-on-his-luck nerd, humiliated by scantily clad women and brutish jocks, who fell into a vat of toxic waste and emerged as a grotesque anti-hero out for revenge. This new version doesn’t reinvent the concept so much as tweak it. Writer-director Macon Blair adds a dose of humanity by giving the protagonist a more heartfelt motivation: family.

Dinklage plays Winston, a weary janitor at a shady waste corporation that might as well be run by Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.” A widower raising his teenage stepson Wade (Tremblay), Winston is told he has 6–12 months to live. Desperate to buy an experimental treatment his insurance won’t cover, he attempts a robbery that goes horribly wrong. The botched crime leads to his transformation from average joe to bulletproof, sludge-dripping monster, armed with a magical mop that dispatches goons in gleefully bloody fashion.

As a campy horror-comedy, “The Toxic Avenger” mines some amusement from Winston’s predicament, but the repetitive tone, flat humor, and Dinklage quite literally phoning in his performance once the monster double takes over, drag it down. Blair, to his credit, doesn’t forget Troma’s legacy, staging practical effects that burst and ooze with all the gooey creativity fans expect. On that front, it’s proudly unfiltered and uncut.

Where the movie falters is in its attempt at heart. Winston’s bond with Wade should be the emotional core, but it often gets buried under an avalanche of carnage and groan-worthy one-liners. A moment where a character praises Winston for raising a child who isn’t biologically his, and being willing to die for him, hints at something deeper, but it’s fleeting. Wood brings manic energy as a ghoulish oddball, and Bacon chews the scenery as a delightfully smarmy villain, but even they can’t elevate the scattershot script.

Ultimately, this “Toxic Avenger” plays like an extended sizzle reel designed to showcase gallons of blood, guts, and goo. That’s fun for a while, but with an ensemble this stacked, it’s disappointing the film doesn’t aspire to more. Had Blair leaned harder into satirizing modern superhero tropes, overstuffed blockbusters, sanitized violence, shallow sentimentality, this could have been a sharp, slimy antidote. Instead, it’s just another messy reboot, one that doesn’t quite clean up.

Grade: C+ 

THE TOXIC AVENGER is now playing in theaters.