There’s a brash, anarchic energy to ‘The Toxic Avenger’, but also a surprising dose of nostalgia. It recalls the pre-Marvel wave of superhero films, particularly ‘Batman’, where the hero is less a slick icon than an awkward outsider transformed by accident and circumstance. Like Bruce Wayne, our protagonist is introverted, socially awkward, estranged from family, and, like Jack Napier, reborn through a plunge into toxic chemicals. Only here, the twist is that he has an aggressive cancer, and the toxic waste becomes not just his mutation but his cure.

Peter Dinklage plays the unlikely mutant hero with a strong streak of environmental consciousness. His nemesis is not just crime but corporate negligence: a chemical company that pollutes with impunity, abandons sick employees, and leaves communities to rot. Dinklage’s character – a widower struggling to raise his stepson – becomes a hero for the voiceless, fighting not only to save lives but to redress a grotesque social imbalance.

The film never takes itself too seriously, and that is part of its charm. It has a punk sensibility, knowingly absurd and full of parody, released two years after its 2023 festival premiere. Kevin Bacon revels in the role of pantomime villain, assisted by his submissive, disfigured brother – a grotesque hybrid of Jack Napier and Danny DeVito’s Penguin. The comedy is heightened by onscreen captions announcing locations like ‘Depressing Outskirts’ and ‘Under Spooky Woods’, tongue firmly in cheek.

Yet beneath the comic-book chaos lies a social-realist core. The film is pointed in its depiction of an America divided between haves and have-nots, where corporate greed goes unchecked and the vulnerable are left to fend for themselves. In that sense, its lineage stretches less to Marvel than to environmental thrillers like ‘Dark Water’ or ‘A Civil Action’, which similarly expose the cost of unchecked industrial negligence.

Ultimately, ‘The Toxic Avenger’ is both parody and underdog story, with ‘toxic’ operating as both literal and metaphorical. It is a superhero film for adults, self-aware, knowingly ridiculous, but with just enough sincerity to give its grotesque hero real heart. The film never pretends to be more than an inside joke – but it’s a joke told with style, bite, and conviction.