Fantastic Fest ’23: Macon Blair’s take on the Troma classic The Toxic Avenger is full of blood, guts, and gooey love

Toxic Avenger. // Courtesy of Legendary Pictures

This is part of our coverage of new genre films premiering at Austin’s Fantastic Fest. 

Remember 90s superhero movies? The weird, offbeat ones? I’m talking Darkman, Blankman, Mystery Men. These were cartoonish, super-heightened candy-colored adventures with goofy bad guys, luminescent costumes and cities where an unlikely number of coked-out purse-snatchers lurked on every corner. These days the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are considered “weird,” as if Spawn’s truly upsetting Violator never branded himself onto the millennial collective memory (no disrespect to James Gunn—there’s only so much individuality the Marvel machine can bear.)

If you miss the days when super-adventures ran under two hours and featured unique backdrops, exaggerated villains and origin stories overflowing with radioactive ooze (and let’s be real, who doesn’t?), Macon Blair’s remake of Troma’s The Toxic Avenger is for you. Blair pays loving homage to the punk ethos and over-the-top gore of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz’s 1984 schlock classic, while giving it light touches of maturity that speak to our current frustrations. It’s a gooey, limb-dismembering, entrail-ripping delight with a heart as big and sloppy as its hero’s mutated eyeballs.

Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage) is a mild-mannered janitor for a healthcare corporation in St. Roma’s Village—the wear and tear on the welcome sign makes it easy to re-read as “Tromaville”—where he and his shy stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay) struggle to get by. After Winston is diagnosed with brain cancer that his insurance won’t cover, he goes to the company’s founder, Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) for help. The vain, bullying Garbinger cruelly turns him away. 

When the desperate Winston attempts to steal the money he needs, he’s shot and dumped into a lagoon of toxic waste, which transmogrifies his body into that of a lumpy mutant superhero wielding an acidic mop. Winston’s quest for justice puts him in the path of J.J. (Taylour Page), a vigilante trying to bring down Garbinger’s corrupt, literally poisonous operation. It also puts Winston further in Garbinger’s crosshairs, with the villain’s impish brother Fritz (Elijah Wood) and girl Friday, Kissy (Julia Davis) assigned to neutralize Winston, J.J. and anyone else who gets in the way. 

Blair’s Toxic Avenger has a few things on its mind in addition to the oceans of gore painting the screen. Garbinger’s health empire clearly echoes the screwy state of the American healthcare industry. Dinklage’s Toxie takes down a group of incel terrorists and a band of homicidal meth-heads, in addition to revealing the truth about St. Roma’s beloved billionaire to anyone who will listen. Blair expresses a punk’s love of DIY and sticking it to the man, which—no surprise—complements the Troma tone like barbeque sauce on a rack of ribs. 

Mostly, however, The Toxic Avenger is gleefully crass, gross and weird. Were it not for the remake pedigree connecting it to an established fan base, it seems unlikely something like this would be allowed a studio release. That, of course, makes it all the more wonderful and miraculous that it exists in the first place. Every frame is packed with Troma references, genre references, self-commentary on its hero’s journey plot, and mutant birds (you know, for fun!). The colors are bright, the viscera is plentiful and the performances are impressively committed considering the inherent goofiness of the material. 

This is a movie that laughs with itself, never at itself, which is a rare and special gift. Macon Blair knows his sources—both the cult-beloved Kaufman movie he’s remaking and the legacy of bizarro superhero blockbusters that pre-date the increasingly gray, self-serious era we now find ourselves trudging through. Would that more folks pick up his lead and return the genre to the CMYK-colored, mainstream-defying, outcast-uplifting world from whence it came.

No official release date has been announced for the film.