We love 80’s horror here at Cult Classics. From Return of the Living Dead to They Live and The Thing, the 1980’s are rich in material to mine for genre nostalgia and material to reimagine. But while some films from that decade have been both reimagined and pseudo-sequelized like The Thing was in 2011, the result was not something that stood the test of time like its original. Enter Street Trash. It’s a film that has it’s fans in the body horror genre. Usually, it is the same types of fans that love Basked Case or The Toxic Avenger. Ryan Kruger’s reimagining/sequel of Street Trash, which hits Screambox on November 19th from Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting, is the rare reimagining that improves on the original.
The original Street Trash deals with homeless people drinking a new hooch/booze called Viper that they don’t know has been created to wipe them out. Horror as satire or metaphor for targeting the underclass/homeless is a big theme in 80’s horror and genre. From They Live to The People Under The Stairs, the underclass as antiheroes against the establishment or invaders is a theme that is relatable to the outsider fans of genre film. Kruger’s film takes that vibe that we’ve seen as recently in films like Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) and presents it to a new generation and milieu. Here, in South Africa, we see that the political establishment is looking for a boogeyman to blame society’s problems on and to improve his political favor, a mayor here has a new plan. He’ll utilize drones with a new aerosol version of Viper to target and wipe-out the homeless and their rat king.
The characters in Kruger’s film are a lot of fun and their dialogue and interactions are what make the film approachable. From conversations about sex trafficking being an allegory in Disney cartoons of the 40’s, to an invisible blue monster that only thinks about sex that guides another homeless citizen – the characters are odd but oddly relatable. They’re people who talk about what their worldview is and where they’re coming from and just want to carry on living, while the world just wants to scapegoat them for larger problems just for existing. Kruger’s script and direction and the performances of the misfits all combine to want to make you root for these guys against the corrupt establishment out to destroy them. The film’s vibrant designs and colors, especially in the horror effects centerpieces are in your face and eye-catching; the sensory explosion of what is going on along with the fun characters do a good job of getting you invested in the film. On the flipside, the heavy Afrikaans accents make some of the character’s interactions with each other hard to follow at times. This coupled with the film’s long runtime does make it a little hard to sit through at times. The film has very cool practical effects centerpieces with melting faces and pustules and bladders exploding. But when you get this kind of drawn-out death for lots of characters it can be a little bit of “been there, done that.” However, gore and practical effects fans will dig these as you get vibrant colors and practical versions of what you see in CGI fests but done much more in your face and in a cool way. There are scenes reminiscent of the melting henchman from the original RoboCop, while calling back to The Thing and other genre films where the downtrodden are a victim of society like The People Under The Stairs, They Live, or Phantasm.
That all being said, the satire and social commentary in Kruger’s Street Trash are timely given the current sociopolitical climate in the US and being able to see that in a different milieu like South Africa might trigger viewers into seeing those potential injustices from a new point of view. Street Trash is also fun, gory and it is horror reimagining done right, with a niche property that can be revived every generation with a new perspective, similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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***
STREET TRASH (2024)
3 of 5 Stars
Fun reimagination of an underseen IP with great practical effects, albeit a bit long and drawn out in runtime.
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VIDEO REVIEW