Toxie scrubs up pretty well.

Shot in 2021, premiered in 2023, and finally dragged into cinemas in 2025 by the scruff of its mutant neck, Macon Blair’s update of one of Troma’s least toxic productions has spent so long on the shelf that it’s almost exceed its half-life. This incarnation of The Toxic Avenger, however, isn’t quite the triumphant return to the gonzo splatter-punk chaos of the original and its wildly variable sequels that people might have been hoping for. It’s a film trapped halfway through its own mutation, slightly too polished to be authentically Troma, and willing to be slightly too weird and too gross to go mainstream, it nevertheless keeps one exploitative hand behind its back in the off chance it stumbles into cross-over success.

Peter Dinklage plays Winston Gooze, a janitor with terminal illness and a conscience, who is transformed into The Toxic Avenger after a workplace heist coincides with an act of eco-sabotage, and he takes a bullet to the head and a bath in radioactive waste. Post-mutation, he becomes a bulging, deformed vigilante (physically embodied by Luisa Guerreiro) with a toxic mop and a flexible but sharply delineated moral code. The main cast is far glossier than you’d expect from the franchise: Jacob Tremblay, Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood headline with Wood delivering a tremendously fun performance that brings together Danny DeVito’s Penguin and what Frodo might’ve ended up looking like had he kept hold of the One Ring. There’s also an unexpected peppering of familiar UK talent: Julia Davis and Ted Lasso alums Annette Badland and Sarah Niles all turn up in supporting roles, lending the film a slightly surreal cross-cultural texture but I guess New Jersey natives are harder to come by when you film in Bulgaria.

Blair’s take on Toxie starts strong and the opening stretch has a heightened, grime-streaked dark theatricality that flirts with the aesthetics of Tim Burton’s Gotham or Chuck Russell’s Edge City, which is apparently what happens when you throw proper movie money at Troma’s sociological style. It feels stylised, charged, ready to detonate but as soon as the story shifts into the brightness of broad daylight, the atmosphere starts to evaporate, leaving behind a greasy residue of the movie that never fully commits to the shock and gore approach of the originals.

To its credit, when the moments come the film doesn’t shy away from the grotesque, the gross and the gory. Limbs fly, the blood spatters and the radioactive piss corrodes all it touches. The slapstick is knowingly puerile and occasionally gloriously unhinged, but it never quite builds the momentum, with a stop-start script that ensures any expensive set pieces are prudently balanced by some overly talky exposition scenes. Likewise, the satirical payload is present and correct but somewhat underplayed. I guess it’s harder to build your indictment around the idea of ecological corporate malfeasance in a world where environmental degradation has become par for the course and the battle feels all but lost. To shore up the satire, there’s a token effort to rope in the mendacity of the American healthcare system, but it never feels more than set dressing for the slimy shenanigans it believes its audience have come to see. You can see the film’s love for the original’s anarchy, but also its hesitancy to abandon itself to it.

Tonally, it wobbles and not in the guerilla filmmaking sets and performances way the first four did. Dinklage plays it straight, anchoring the drama with genuine pathos, while the world around him is throwing custard pies and spraying arterial fountains. It’s not that those tones can’t coexist – it’s that the film never quite fuses them. Despite the years separating their productions, there’s some shared DNA between this and the recent Naked Gun revival in that it mimics the moves and borrows the style but can’t consistently replicate the energy.

As reboots go, it’s far from a betrayal, and there are more than a few moments of genuine Troma-style genius, but it does feel like a dilution. The toxic sludge is brightly recognisable, but it’s now made with organic, locally sourced sustainable ingredients. For long-time fans, there’s enough here to smile, grimace and maybe even cheer for. For newcomers, it might just offer a slightly sanitised entry point to The Toxic Avenger, although you kind of feel newbies should undergo a much filthier baptism than this.