Downtrodden janitor Winston (Peter Dinklage) finds himself thrown into a vat of toxic waste and transformed into the horrifically deformed superhero The Toxic Avenger. 

The Toxic Avenger is a rather hilarious and fun homage/reboot of the 1984 low budget horror movie of the same name. It is a B-movie, splatterfest with an awful lot of heart and a lot of chuckle inducing humour. 

The plot is fairly straightforward. Winston lives in a rather dystopian vision of America where the medical corporation that he works for can recklessly pollute the environment whilst maximising profits and minimising employee healthcare. When Winston discovers he has an inoperable brain tumour that will not be covered by his health insurance a series of unfortunate events turn him into the superhuman Toxic Avenger. A deformed super strong entity that wields a mop. Realising his power he sets out to help the downtrodden. 

Writer/Director Macon Blair does a superb job of filling the film to the brim with witty little asides and making the gory splatter more comical than gut churning. All of the main characters get witty nicknames such as “The Hero”, “The Villain” and “His Creepy Brother” and the locations visited get equal billing such as, “Depressing Outskirts” and “Yonder Spooky Woods”. There is even a place named St. Roma which has some graffiti removing the S to make it spell Troma, the name of the production company that made the original and a slew of other low budget B movies. 

All the actors are fully signed up to the silly humour and outlandish violence. Kevin Bacon and Julia Davis are the most fun as “The Villain” and “His Associate”, with Elijah Wood coming in closely behind as “His Creepy Brother”. All of them revel in their crazy characters and deliver wonderfully overwrought performances. There is also a crazy death metal band that seems to be similar to Slipknot that have side jobs as assassins that are quite amusing and that really sum up the craziness on show. 

I then need to give a shout out to the to the physical effects that make the splatter so much fun. There are some crazy and gory deaths in this film but I spent most of the time laughing at them rather than feeling my stomach turn. It is also worth calling out Luisa Guerreiro who plays “The Bod” once Winston is turned into the Toxic Avenger. The tone is landed just perfectly. 

If you like the concept and history of The Toxic Avenger and Troma’s splatter B movies you should have a lot of fun in this swiftly paced one-hundred-minute feature. 

If however you are not a fan of this sort of thing that might just be ninety-minutes too long for you. 

Ultimately this is a film made for a small niche of film fans and I think it really hits the mark it was aiming for.