'The Toxic Avenger Unrated': A Gleeful, Goo-Soaked Revival with Surprising Heart

Mike Moody-Garcia

03 Sep 2025 — 3 min read

The Toxic Avenger Unrated (2025)

The original Toxic Avenger—that crass, no-budget, paint-fume-fueled exploitation flick from the '70s—earned its cult status the hard way: by being completely unhinged. It was proudly grotesque, gleefully stupid, and, somehow, pretty damn charming. Naturally, it spawned sequels, cartoons, comics, and a rabid fanbase, but it never really broke through to the mainstream.

So now we’ve got The Toxic Avenger Unrated, in theaters and freshly rebooted. Can it go mainstream? Is it even trying to? Should we care?

Here’s the answer: It’s a fun movie. You should go see it. Will this thing blow up the way its distributor (riding high off the Terrifier franchise) might hope? Probably not.

Because The Toxic Avenger has always been a bizarre beast. It's more of a punk rock, bload-soaked Muppet show than a traditional horror movie. It's a live-action cartoon, a goo-splattered social satire, a love letter to low-budget mayhem. And this new version embraces that identity fully.

I liked the original, which was a lot funnier and more endearing than it had any right to be. And I really enjoyed this new take, which delivers the core ingredients fans expect, like gore, goop, and irreverence. But it succeeds largely because of its unexpected sweetness.

Beneath the big screen viscera lies a genuinely heartwarming story about a father trying to do right by his son by murdering corrupt, fascist, eco-destroying villains in the most disgusting ways imaginable.

Peter Dinklage stars as the new Toxic Avenger, and he's fantastic. Dinklage is one of the most charismatic actors working today, and casting him here was a great call. He brings real emotional gravity to a role that requires both wounded vulnerability and righteous rage.

Dinklage voices the mutated Avenger post-transformation, and while he's not physically in the suit and makeup halfway through the film, you’d never know it. That credit goes to Luisa Guerreiro, the stunt performer behind the monster makeup, who embodies the role with such physicality and pathos that you never question for a second that it's not Dinklage under all the latex. Together, they make this absurd character feel weirdly real.

The heart of the film is the bond between Dinklage’s downtrodden custodian and his son (Jacob Tremblay), a kid trying to stay hopeful in a world designed to crush that hope. A wildly implausible (and hilarious) series of events leads Dinklage's everyman to swimming in radioactive ooze, gaining super strength, pising acid, and scrubbing evil from the streets with a nuclear mop.

The plot unfolds as you’d expect: The Toxic Avenger becomes a folk hero, battles absurdly corrupt villains, and ultimately sacrifices everything for his son. And somehow, amidst the exploding heads and flailing limbs, the emotional beats land.

Is it perfect? Not quite. I wanted it to be edgier, a bit more dangerous. The tone is playful and anarchic, but some of the jokes don’t quite stick, and the movie occasionally pulls its punches. For a film billed as “Unrated,” it feels surprisingly safe in spots.

The gore is another mixed bag. There are solid gross-out sequences, but some of the impact is dulled by digital effects. The artificiality fits the film’s cartoonish style, sure, but when the blood looks like CGI, the shock value loses a bit of its kick.

Still, there’s so much to enjoy here. Director Macon Blair has clearly studied the original inside and out, and he fills the frame with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual gags that will delight longtime fans. The movie’s tone, production design, and pacing all feel intentional and well-crafted.

And the cast? Across the board, excellent. Kevin Bacon goes full camp as a sleazy corporate MAHA villain, and Elijah Wood, channeling Greasy Strangler vibes, pops up as a twitchy creep with some of the film’s best one-liners.

The Toxic Avenger Unrated isn’t aiming to win over the masses. It’s a gross, goofy, oddly tender genre flick for people who appreciate latex limbs, subversive politics, and genuine heart beneath the slime. See it in a packed theater, if you can. This one plays best with an audience ready to laugh, wince, and cheer for a radioactive janitor with a mop.

Let me know what you think when you catch it.