Street Trash (2024) Review

Viper is back and deadlier than ever! Fried Barry director Ryan Kruger takes on the 1987 cult classic Street Trash, bringing it up to the modern day with a dystopian flare.

An essential “melt movie”, the original Street Trash (1987) highlighted the goopiest parts of the golden age of practical effects. The iconic toilet scene featured neon green, blue, and purple goo, a Basket Case-esque puppet, and Evil Dead-esque cinematography.

The ‘87 version has some hints at a deeper meaning and almost makes a full statement about the nuances of homelessness and what societal conditions lead to this state but it is clear that making a point isn’t the main goal of the film. This is fine, especially given the buffet of Viper deaths we are served but the unfocused plot made the film drag and difficult to pay attention to. There were too many little criticisms of society and so much going on for anything meaningful to stick.

Kruger’s take hones in on one theme and builds melt movie hallmarks around it which I found to be more effective and entertaining. While this black comedy will make audiences giggle and squirm it may also inspire some empathy and reflection on the treatment of the “unwanted” populations in Western countries.

In Street Trash (2024), a futuristic South African city no longer has a passive and sometimes fearful approach to unhoused populations but an aggressive, abusive, and homicidal one. That is made very clear in the first scene where we see an inhumane experiment performed on an unhoused person. The results are a sick full-body melt that features boiling ooze and an up-close degloving. From there we are witness to a comical castration of a militant police officer, a fun nod to the ‘87 film, and launched into the vision of a country harshly segregated into two groups, the well-offs, and the want-nots.

As the group, led by Ronald (Sean Cameron Michael), is introduced and the complex social hierarchy is revealed, there is a strong sense of humanity and, in any other setting, this could be a posse comedy. But the authoritarian rule of the city and dire obstacles they face are ever lurking behind their quips and quirks. Kruger works in an interesting storytelling device here with the introduction of ourselves, the viewer, as a character complete with people looking us in the eye, speaking, and gesturing to us. We even have limbs! This makes the audience part of the movie rather than an observer and it really drives home the point that this suffering can happen to the vast majority of us whether we want to admit it or not. It is a smart call back to a couple of monologues from the ‘87 Street Trash, one slurred by a character trying to explain to the infamous liquor store owner that he was a normal guy with a wife and family before he lost it all. The other was at the junkyard where Wendy (Jane Arakawa) scolds her boss that they are closer to being bums than they are millionaires.

Unlike the ‘87 film, Kruger sticks with the theme of class consciousness, and even solidarity, as it is revealed that the toxic, melt-inducing, and cheap, Viper concoction has been engineered into a chemical weapon and deployed by an oligarchical government to eliminate all they deem undesirable. The people that make up this government and its supporters, the “industrialists”, are vapid and unlikeable, barely full characters with any meaningful backstory. They are more like props, which are usually the “bums” we commonly see in pop culture. The flipping of these tropes does not go unnoticed as we grow closer to the “street trash” and even see some strong emotions around character deaths.

Once the true use of Viper is discovered Ronald and company rally together across the superficial divides they’ve drawn on the street and fight their oppressors. Their rise is sandwiched between clips of a celebratory speech from the city mayor. The snippets sound like they were ripped from headlines about inner-city conditions and misinterpreted crime rate statistics. The final scene with the mayor is an uncanny display of heartlessness and hatred for the less fortunate citizens of his city.

This movie has a wide appeal because of its absurd effects, courtesy of an incredible effects team, and snappy humor while simultaneously being grounded in serious undertones. It is not scary by way of jumpscares or suspense but by the implications of our future, much like how Soylent Green still unsettles audiences today. Oh, and fans of gross-out flicks will love this. Street Trash (2024) is an over-indulgence of bubbling, popping, and melting that makes it a new quintessential watch in the melt subgenre.

The 2024 Street Trash takes the breadcrumbs left by its predecessor and makes them into a fully realized social commentary. One that, unfortunately, is just as needed now as it was in 1987. We know more about the many circumstances that lead to being unhoused and see well-meaning efforts to relieve those experiencing it with seemingly no sustainable solution in sight. We are mostly in the same place legislatively as the characters depicted in the older version of the film and Kruger’s imaginative take on where that can lead us should be taken as a warning as much as it can be enjoyed as a gloriously gooey melt classic.

Movie Rating:

Street Trash trailer