2025 The Toxic Avenger

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Posted By: Brian Schell October 8, 2025

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This remake does a good job of paying tribute to the original while being different enough to still entertain. It is still stupid fun and over the top, but with a different vibe. It’s saturated and colorful, almost cartoonish, with less of a thrown together feeling that the original had. When the gore kicks in, it’s the goriest gore. The humor is hit and miss but mostly hit. We both enjoyed it, but it doesn’t quite live up to the original.

Spoilery Synopsis

Winston narrates his story, which begins on the other side of town. Mel Ferd, the reporter, gets footage from the BTH Headquarters. He’s got evidence that they’ve been dumping toxic waste illegally. Just then, a group of goons break in and kill him. He dies hard. His junior reporter, J.J., gets away. Credits roll. 

In St. Roma’s Village (or Tromaville), we meet Winston, who lives with his son Wade and can’t cook breakfast. We see there are some really weird people in the town. There are some bad guys who are forcing shopkeeper Daisy to sell her place. 

Winston goes to work at BTH as a janitor, and it doesn’t look like OSHA would approve of the place at all. He gets a call from his doctor, who says he has an inoperable case of @#$$#@, He’s got six months to a year to live. Winston then calls his insurance company who explains things like insurance companies always do. Yeah, he’s screwed. 

Meanwhile, at the Garbinger Mansion, BTH Owner Bob may have passed his prime, but he’s getting an infusion of gorilla blood. His brother Fritz comes in, and he’s tremendously weird. Fritz’s friends, The Killer Nutz, were the ones who botched the reporter’s murder. Fritz sends the Nutz after J.J. to finish the job. They are not subtle. 

Meanwhile, at New Chemical High School (New Chem High), Wade auditions for a talent show. It goes badly. Winston tries to cheer him up, but he’s just not good at that. 

Bob Garbinger is attending a big fancypants banquet. His business is losing a ton of money, but he’s trying to bluff his way through that. He meets with the town’s big mob boss who wants payment on what he’s owed. Winston interrupts to ask Bob for money for his treatments. Bob promises to sort it all out, but he has no intention of doing anything. 

Winston goes to BTH, and when he opens the gate, J.J. sneaks inside. Winston dips his mop in the toxic goo and threatens the security guard with it to rob the company’s treasury. The Nutz show up and shoot him dead. They drop his corpse into a big vat of nastiness and throw in the mop for good measure. Down in the vat, Winston is transformed rather dramatically. 

Winston goes home to Wade, who takes one look at the little monster in the window and freaks out. The real estate swindler is there and shoots Winston. Winston gets angry and rips the man’s arm off. Almost instantly the town forms a mob, complete with torches, to chase the monster away. He passes out. 

In the morning, Winston wakes up in a hobo’s camp. The man there, Gunther, is pretty crazy. Gunther gives him some wise superhero advice and sets him upon a mission, giving him his mop which he found. 

Meanwhile, the Miss Meat restaurant, The Nasty Lads, another gang, have taken over the place. They’re angry that the place has changed its name and mascot, and they’re heavily armed. Suddenly, a little green man with a toxic mop breaks in the back door. His mop does some really bad things to the Nasty Lads and saves the hostages. 

Now a hero, the press starts calling Winston the “Toxic Avenger.” Wade sees all this on the TV and knows who he really is. J.J. comes to the door and explains the whole thing to him. The Nutz show up, and they both run away. But one of the Nutz tags Wade with a tracking device.

The mob boss and his son, who lost his arm last night, also see the news and orders his men to kill Toxie. Bob, Fritz, and Kissy also know who he is, and they aren’t happy. His geeks and nerds explain how the mutations happened. Can they reproduce the mutation? 

Wade and J.J. run into Winston on the street. They talk for a minute until the mob guys show up and shoot Winston again. J.J. gets shot by the Nutz, and everybody runs. Toxie takes out his baddies, and he takes J.J. to Gunther, who used to be a doctor before he was a crazy hobo. Or maybe not, because Winston ends up patching her up with the healing power of his blue blood. 

Fritz and Bob have taken Wade to lure in Winston. 

At the St. Roma Village’s Festival, the Nutz are playing on the stage. J.J. tampers with the sound system so Winston can sing his song instead. The crowd loves “Toxie.” Winston mangles the band right there in front of everyone. They torture the big baby-headed chicken man to get Wade’s location. 

Toxie and J.J. head to Bob’s mansion and are promptly captured and chained up. He does the gloating routine, and Toxie threatens him. The scientists remove some of Toxie’s blood and do tests on it. That’s when the mob boss shows up, and he’s not happy. Bob, knowing his death is near, drinks the stuff extracted from Toxie. 

And he changes. The mob guys don’t last long. Kissy tries it too, just a little bit, and she gets even weirder. 

Toxie gets himself and J.J. out of the chains by peeing acid urine on them and goes after Wade. Wade gets blown to pieces. 

Suddenly, Bob shows up, completely mutated. They fight, as do J.J. and Kissy. As Toxie gets ready to kill Bob, Fritz shows up with Wade – Fritz rescued him just in time. Bob, naturally, gets back up and has to be finished off spectacularly. 

Kissy isn’t out of the action yet. She stabs Toxie and kills Fritz before blowing up everyone. 

Winston wakes up in the hospital and watches the news, which explains how BTH has fallen. His doctor is there as well, he reports that his @#$$#@ has completely gone away, and he’s healthy now. We see that J.J., Wade, and even Fritz have survived and are doing well. Toxie is the town’s biggest hero!

And there is an important and very dramatic after-credit scene.

Brian’s Commentary

It’s got a big budget and has many references to old Troma films. Still, it’s awfully polished and doesn’t have the low-budget schlocky feel of the originals. A lot of the jokes and puns are pretty obvious, and a lot of them fall flat. 

The actors, especially Elijah Wood and Kevin Bacon, are obviously having a great time in their roles. Wood looks like a cross between the Penguin and Riff-Raff. Peter Dinklage… I have no idea how that happened. 

The original was a hilarious parody of horror and superhero films, this was much more straightforward and not nearly as funny. 

It’s fine, and definitely entertaining, but not as good as the classic original. 

Kevin’s Commentary

I noticed lots of throwbacks and references to the original “Toxic Avenger” and other Troma movies. An interesting bit of trivia is that once Winston becomes Toxie, there is an actress, Luisa Guerreiro, doing the body work under all those prosthetics.

Some of the humor was lame, but lots of it was not. I laughed and chuckled many times watching this. 

Overall, I’d call this good and entertaining, but not as quite good (?) and entertaining as the original.