Skarsgård stars as “Boy” who avows revenge after his family is murdered by Hilda Van Der Koy (Janssen), the deranged matriarch of a corrupt post-apocalyptic dynasty that left the boy orphaned, deaf, and voiceless. Driven by his inner voice, one which he co-opted from his favorite childhood video game, Boy trains with a mysterious shaman (Ruhian) to become an instrument of death and is set loose on the eve of the annual culling of dissidents.
Bedlam ensues as Boy commits bloody martial arts mayhem, inciting a wrath of carnage and blood-letting. As he tries to get his bearings in this delirious realm, Boy soon falls in with a desperate resistance group, all the while bickering with the apparent ghost of his rebellious little sister.
Review
Boy Kills World drops us into a forest where ‘Boy’ is training to take out an evil leader, played by Janssen, who killed his family. We don’t know much about this dystopian world. We learn there is a ‘Hunger Games-style’ reaping that gathers up a dozen citizens to die for the Van der Koy family to show off their power. The film has promise as a comic-style blood fest of sci-fi dystopian action, and an all-star cast that includes Bill Skarsgard, Famke Janssen, Michelle Dockery, and Sharlto Copley.
The film is a bloody, Kill Bill meets Sucker Punch mash-up that spends so much time flashing back incoherently that you often wonder where it’s going or what it’s trying to say. Director Moritz Mohr’s Boy Kills World squanders some of its best ideas and cast (like Janssen) for more fight scenes and action. The result is campy and interesting at points but fails to follow through completely. The twists are usually predictable, with at least a few that I felt were clever. The fight choreography is solid, but the close-up camera work might turn people off at points.
Overall the film isn’t the start of a new franchise or even a well-executed attempt at a comic-style bloody martial arts flick. This Hunger Games meets Kill Bill meets Sucker Punch is a whacky, bloody, strange and inconsistent campy bender that just might make for a fun weekend movie, from home, but not worth the trip to theaters.
Boy Kills World Poster 2024.
