A blood-soaked love letter addressed not just to a genre, but to the craft of filmmaking as a whole, “The Toxic Avenger” is more sentimental than one might expect from a movie with roughly a dozen appendage losses. And while this new incarnation of the classic 1980s Troma film series is little more than a stock and standard superhero origin story, its use of meta humor and commitment to its own absurdist bits puts it in exclusive company amongst the best of its kind.
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The narrative set-up should be familiar to fans of this franchise, with chemical factory janitor Winston (Peter Dinklage) falling ill as a result of workplace exposure to some nasty shit. A single stepfather to teenager Wade (Jacob Tremblay), Winston approaches his company’s CEO, Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), following a denial of medical coverage via the employee insurance plan. Garbinger’s refusal to help leads Wade to break into the company factory to steal the funds for his treatment, which puts him in the middle of a corporate espionage plot spearheaded by JJ (Taylour Paige), whose actions inadvertently lead to Winston falling into a vat of chemicals.
When Winston emerges, he’s a deformed creature with self-healing powers and a deadly mop, which he uses to become the eponymous avenging angel for the small town of St. Roma, New Jersey. As this Toxic Avenger, Winston (or ‘Toxie’) not only stands up to the criminal element in town, but also links back up with JJ to root out the evil at its core. Along the way, Toxie must also look out for Wade, his community, and his own (slimy) neck.
Director Macon Blair penned this adaptation, and his unique characters, world, and tone for all of this come through in every frame. A comedy first, splatter-gore-horror second, “The Toxic Avenger” exudes confidence and charm in a knowing yet not at all obtuse or half-assed manner. This isn’t a silly movie stretching for laughs through shoddy acting and low-budget optics, but rather a well-produced grindhouse effort that sees every cast member and department head putting their backs into it.
Toxie (voiced by Dinklage and played in-camera by Luisa Guerreiro) looks magnificent in practical, non-CG: a credit to Vanessa Porter (costume design), Anna Andreeva (make-up), and their teams. Blair’s coordination of these elements with the keeps most cartoonish level of violence and gore keeps the effort skipping along at a good clip, and allows lines like, “Handsome fella had his arm torn off like wet bread” to land with additional, hilarious impact. And while the movie doesn’t take itself seriously, those making it absolutely do, and it leads to a magical blend of wild yet earnest alchemy that sees the film walk that fine line between the absurd and the entertaining.
“The Toxic Avenger” is very much in on the joke, too, as everything from the naming conventions to the narrative conceits pokes the audience with winking reminders that it knows what it is doing. A man is shot repeatedly in front of a high-story window until he realizes the scene will work better if he falls out of it, and Winston LITERALLY saves the cat in the first 10 minutes. The actors all play their parts with an unembarrassed and committed sense of glee that pulls the audience in from the jump, giving the same 110 percent that Blair and everyone else behind the camera viewers offer here.
Some elements stretch the imagination and/or patience of viewers, like Fritz (Elijah Wood), brother/chief henchman to Bob Garbinger, who leads a literal insane clown posse of sorts. Bacon also plays his chief villain role with broad strokes that come and go (though this could be the result of his character shooting straight, undiluted gorilla blood). That said, if a person is willing to buy into the fact that Winston is a loser-turned-hero due to heavy chemical waste exposure, and that there is a real location called “Yonder Spooky Woods,” then none of this really matters.
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Indeed, an audience will be sold on this or alienated by it in the first 5 minutes, and for those in the former camp, it’s a hoot. Buried beneath the marbled, waste-scorched flesh piles and entrail scatterings sits a tender, earnest story about fatherhood and community service. Low rent, CGI splatter effects by the bucket-full honor the Troma roots of this property, while practical costume, make-up, and production design speak to the reverence of the same. It ain’t pretty, sure: but that was never the Toxic Avenger’s style. Blair and company understand this, and the movie (world?) is better for it. [B+]