Reel Review: Street Trash (2024)

Ryan Kruger’s “Street Trash”—a sequel to the 1987 subversive body horror comedy—is everything it should be: a disgusting, sloppy mess.

Director Ryan Kruger is the South African madman behind the gloriously fucked up Fried Barry. Early this year, I’d heard he was tackling a remake of the cult classic Street Trash. We’ve had Kruger on Another Goddamn Horror Podcast, and to say I was excited would be an understatement because if there’s any recent director I’d trust with that remake, it would be him. As it turns out, he wasn’t making a remake; he was actually making a sequel.

After watching it, I can confirm that he didn’t let us down.

1987’s Street Trash was a social satire that skewered class warfare, and it was notable for being one of the most disgusting films of the decade and many decades to follow. Equal parts comedic and grotesque, it used body horror to tell the story of a homeless uprising from Brooklyn transients & Vietnam War veterans going against law enforcement after a tainted alcohol starts to kill them in a gruesome fashion. It was effective and, to this day, remains a cult gross-out film that few films of today can measure up to.

The sequel from Ryan Kruger takes the same gross-out body horror from the original and ups the ante considerably.

Whereas the original film’s body-melting epidemic came from old spoiled booze, the 2024 sequel focuses on a rich tyrant who is melting the homeless population on purpose using poisoned gas. But these people that they consider expendable aren’t going down without a fight.

Throughout the film, we see them band together to try to take down the very men responsible by using their own weapons against them.

This is, without a doubt, the most disgusting movie of 2024, and it is presented perfectly.

The script is darkly comedic and crass on purpose.

It aims to offend any and everyone who views it, in a way that Troma has been doing for years, but it does so with a message leading the way. That message is about how our world looks at the homeless and less fortunate people who live on the streets. It’s not just all melty human gloop with no substance. There’s a real message here with a very real heart. It just happens to be wrapped up in a body-melting, pitch-black comedy-horror package.

The film shines the most when we see the gas do its worst. Skin bubbles and boils to the point of explosion, bones break, muscles rip, and bodies leak the multicolored grease paint-looking fluids that made the original stand out.

All of what we loved is here with better visuals for modern times, and we have a new cast to tell the sloppy story. This one takes place in Cape Town, where Ryan Kruger is from, and features a cast that he’s familiar with. Fried Barry himself (Gary Green) plays one of the more stand-out members of the homeless gang who talks to an imaginary foul-mouthed puppet that sounds like Triumph The Insult Comic Dog and looks like a big-eyed, huge dickes Teletubby from hell. And yes, we see the giant puppet dick at least once.

This is the epitome of a film that will not be for everyone, though.

As I said, it’s absolutely disgusting in basically every way imaginable, and there is not a single politically correct aspect to it at all. When you put this one on, you need to leave your sensitivity at the door and strap in because the ride you’re going to take is one hell of a wild rollercoaster.

I have to give Kruger credit where credit is due: He didn’t hold back in the slightest. If you are a Troma fan, you’ll love this. If you loved the original, you’ll love this. If you love body horror and dark toilet humor, you’ll love this. I’m a member of all three of those groups, so I absolutely loved it from start to finish.