The Toxic Avenger

The film opens in the town of St. Rosa’s Village, in a factory owned by mega corporation BTH. A man, Mel Ferd (Shaun Dooley), is visited in his office by his employee, J.J. Doherty (Taylour Paige). She has gathered information against BTH and is planning to expose them, but she knows that people will be coming for her. A team of rapping thugs, the Killer Nutz, enter the office after J.J. flees. They shoot Mel multiple times, but he keeps getting up to taunt them. It’s not until one of them blasts him out the window with a harpoon that he dies, and J.J. runs away after seeing her mentor die.

BTH is run by Robert Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), alongside his assistant Kissy Sturnevan (Julia Davis). Garbinger is in league with gangsters, and his company is being investigated for dumping toxic sludge into the city, making their customers and employees very sick. Garbinger’s younger, freaky-looking brother Fritz (Elijah Wood) handles business with gangsters to send out to do their dirty work. They know that J.J. has been working to expose them, so Fritz goes to the Killer Nutz to send them after her.

Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage) is a janitor that works at the BTH factory. He is a widowed stepfather to Wade (Jacob Tremblay), who does not have a close relationship with Winston after his mother’s passing, and he has aspirations to perform at school, but he gets stage fright during an audition and walks out.

Winston goes to the doctor and discovers he has an aggressive brain tumor, leaving him with roughly a year left to live. He tries to get his insurance to cover the costs of his expenses, only to find that his company insurance plan does nothing for him. He goes home and tries to cheer Wade up after learning of his audition by putting on a tutu to dance with him, but Wade is not interested.

Winston later goes to a dinner event that Garbinger and Kissy are at, along with other public figures like Mayor Togar (Sarah Niles), hoping to get his help with his health insurance. Garbinger has Kissy escort Winston to what is believed to be a discussion, but they just send him out and laugh at him for thinking they would help him.

Winston goes to BTH and dips his mop in radioactive sludge, which he then uses to threaten a coworker into letting him rob the place. At the same time, J.J. is at the scene trying to gather her evidence against the company to publicly expose them. She and Winston collide while running out, and Winston’s money gets burned up. The Killer Nutz arrive to kill J.J., but they instead find Winston and shoot him in the face. Fritz angrily chastises them for shooting the wrong person, so the Killer Nutz dump Winston’s body and his mop into a pool of toxic sludge.

Later, Winston emerges from the sludge completely mutated, with his left eye turning black and growing larger than a golf ball, and the rest of his skin becoming green and splotchy. When he tries to return to his apartment, he finds Wade calling 911 because his stepdad never came home. Winston tries to reveal himself, but Wade is naturally freaked out and pushes Winston off the fire escape, causing him to land on the car of Spence Barkabus (Abraham Lewis), a smug rich prick who is trying to buy out a shop belonging to an elderly woman. Spence sees the mutated Winston and shoots him, but the bullets get pushed out of Winston’s body and the wounds heal up. Winston charges towards Spence and tears his arm clean off, leaving him flailing on the ground in agony (and the shopkeeper also disposes of his contract).

Winston retreats to the woods, where he camps out with a hobo named Guthrie Stockins (David Yow), who is not put off by Winston’s appearance. Winston resolves to go back to Wade and show him who he really is. When he goes back into town, Winston finds out that a right-wing supremacist group called “The Nasty Lads” are protesting at a fast food joint, Miss Meat, over the fact that the place used to be called “MISTER Meat”, and are angry over the “woke” change. They are holding the diners hostage, but Winston enters the place with his radioactive mop and proceeds to gruesomely destroy the Nasty Lads by splattering them with his mop and even pulling one guy’s intestines out through his ass. The hostages are freed, and everyone views Winston as a hero. He is briefly interviewed, and Wade recognizes his stepdad’s voice on the TV.

The public views Winston as a hero, dubbing him “The Toxic Avenger”, or just “Toxie”. This catches the attention of the Garbingers, as Robert knows that Toxie and Winston are the same person, and he blames Fritz for letting this happen. Fritz informs his brother that Toxie has a son.

J.J. shows up to Winston’s apartment and meets with Wade after finding his stepdad’s ID at the crime scene, since she witnessed what the Killer Nutz did to Winston. Just as J.J. resolves to help Wade rescue his dad, the Killer Nutz arrive to try and abduct Wade. J.J. helps him escape, and they run into Toxie on the streets. The Killer Nutz shoot J.J. in her abdomen and take Wade with them.

Toxie brings J.J. into the woods since Guthrie told him he was a doctor, but he does nothing to help. Remembering his regenerative abilities, Toxie cuts his hand open and drips his blood onto J.J.’s gunshot wound, healing her.

The Killer Nutz are putting on a show which Toxie crashes. He starts rapping one of their songs, which causes leader Budd Berserk (Julian Kostov) to get angry. He reaches for his gun to shoot Toxie, but he whips his mop across Budd’s head, scalping him and literally blowing his mind. Toxie then proceeds to eviscerate the rest of the Killer Nutz in front of their fans, including one moment where he throws the mop through one guy’s head, resulting in the DJ getting electrocuted by her keyboard. Toxie then announces to the horrified fans that the Killer Nutz were murderers-for-hire and that they kidnapped his son, with proof from J.J. to back it up.

Toxie and J.J. attempt to make their move on the Garbingers, but they are captured. Robert forcefully has Toxie’s blood extracted to create a serum for himself. He drinks it and meets with Spence’s father Thad (Jonny Coyne), who was previously angry with Garbinger over how he is handling his business. The concoction turns Garbinger into a hairy, horned, fanged, clawed Krampus-like monster that kills Thad and his thugs. Meanwhile, Wade talks to Fritz about how his dad is coming to find him, and asks Fritz if his own family would do the same for him.

J.J. talks some sense into Toxie as he is starting to give up and resign himself to his fate. He remembers that his urine is acidic, so he whips his dick out (to J.J.’s initial disgust) and pees to melt the chains off himself and J.J. They sneak onto the Garbingers’ compound, scaring two guards into killing themselves before a shootout occurs with other goons. Toxie goes after them and sees Wade stuck in a shack. A bullet hits a gas tank, causing the shack to explode. Toxie is despaired, thinking that Wade is dead. Monster Garbinger then emerges to fight Toxie with his axe, while Kissy has taken what remains of the serum and is now partially mutated. Toxie and Garbinger duel, with Garbinger almost beheading Toxie, but Toxie gains the upper hand and tries to kill Garbinger until Wade emerges, alive. A brief flashback shows that Fritz took his words to heart and helped him escape the shack before it blew up. Wade tries to persuade his stepdad to not kill Garbinger because Winston is still a good person, but the villain emerges for one last attack. Toxie impales Garbinger with his mop and then slams him through the hood of his own car, and J.J. turns the engine on to shred Garbinger like a smoothie. Toxie goes to Wade, but Kissy impales him with a wooden plank before she slashes Fritz’s throat. She goes to kill J.J. but Toxie tackles her onto spilled fuel, which ignites and explodes, killing Kissy.

Toxie wakes up in the hospital with the same doctor that diagnosed him, along with a blind woman that is an agent and one of the hostages that Winston saved at Miss Meat. With Garbinger’s crimes exposed (but people think he’s still alive), the agent agrees to sweep everything about Toxie under the rug. Others associated with the Garbingers, like Mayor Togar, have been exposed and arrested. The doctor also informs Winston that his mutation has cured him of his tumor, meaning he is no longer going to die. Outside his room, Toxie is greeted by dozens of thankful citizens, including Wade, who hugs his stepdad for the first time. Fritz is shown to have survived but now speaks with a voice modulator and is still probably going to jail. Winston also bids farewell to J.J.

During the credits, Toxie watches Wade perform at the school’s talent show, and he is proud of his boy. After the credits, we see Toxie giving an overly long and detailed description of how to make a grilled cheese. The final text promises that Toxie will return in a sequel if this movie makes a billion dollars…in crypto.

Last Updated: October 05, 2025 at 11:08