- Boy Kills World
- Directed by Moritz Mohr
- Written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers
- Starring Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe and H. Jon Benjamin
- Classification 14A; 115 minutes
- Opens in theatres April 26
In Boy Kills World, a blood-soaked, gleefully unserious ode to early ‘90s martials arts movies and video games, Bill Skarsgard stars as a deaf orphan who is unable to speak, so he lets his fists, feet, elbows and a handy cheese grater do the talking.
Its basic premise is shared with Dev Patel’s recent directorial debut, Monkey Man, another thriller about an orphan fists of fury-ing his way through a crooked organization. But where Patel’s earnest and eager “John Wick in Mumbai” strives to be a rousing rallying cry for marginalized and downtrodden voices, Boy Kills World has no such aspirations. Instead, it’s a cheeky post-Deadpool comedy – irreverent to a fault – with grindhouse aesthetics that tend to feel inspired by Quentin Tarantino rather than the movies that inspired Quentin Tarantino.
The most jarring and telling difference between this and Patel’s film is the quality of their fight scenes. Monkey Man is frustratingly incoherent, with all its choppy editing and way-up-close cinematography, as if the camera is trying to get in on the action instead of capturing it. Boy Kills World, on the other hand, punches way above its weight class. It’s got gonzo choreography, cartoonish mayhem and loads of carnage, the kind caused by a very Acme-grade anvil and that cheese grater among other unexpectedly deadly objects. And its swooping but precise camera work tends to speed up and slowdown on its way to greet the mixed martial arts action, in all its bone-crunching intensity.
Boy Kills World is less impressive in its storytelling. The movie is set in a future dystopia, where citizens are living under a brutal occupying force. Some are selected to sacrifice their lives on a live-television slaughter called The Culling. The whole set up parodies The Running Man and The Hunger Games, both of which satirized our consumption of violence and how that extends beyond entertainment and into real-world narratives of resistance. Boy Kills World can only clown around with that premise, in a way that is as exhausting as it is toothless, while using it as a springboard to satisfy our appetite for violence.
In Boy Kills World, Bill Skarsgard stars as a deaf orphan who is unable to speak, so he lets his fists, feet, elbows and a handy cheese grater do the talking.VVS
Skarsgard’s “Boy” lives off the grid in the jungle where he’s trained under a shaman to become a lethal weapon. He’s lost his family and is vowing to get revenge against the head of the oppressive state that is responsible (Skarsgard’s Hemlock Grove co-star Famke Janssen). He’s also haunted by visions of his adorable little sister (Quinn Copeland), a welcome playful presence who complicates a brutal action scene when she shows up, dressed as a ninja, with butterfly wings.
That Boy can’t hear or speak also turns into an opportunity for Skarsgard, the star who plays creepy monsters in Hemlock Grove and It and is now in his action era. He just played the petulant villain in John Wick: Chapter 4 and is picking up Brandon Lee’s mantle in the upcoming The Crow remake. As a hero with no name and no lines, Skarsgard leans into Buster Keaton-esque physical comedy. His quizzical, excited and confused expressions play off or against an amusing inner monologue, which is voiced by Bob’s Burgers H. Jon Benjamin.
That voice emulates the kind of operatic video game narrations you would hear in Street Fighter, and delivers the punchlines to most of the gags writers Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers toss off just to see what sticks. A lot of the humour tends to be grating, but the jokes that land do so splendidly, such as a running bit where Boy, who reads lips, struggles to understand an ally named Benny (Isaiah Mustafa). He interprets one line, for instance, as “dodo bogs for long limbs,” and can only look on exasperated, not knowing what to do with that.
The best humour tends to be built into the obscenely gory action. An early sequence, when Boy single-handedly takes on a small army in a factory, stands out because nothing goes his way. He thinks he lucked into an arsenal but discovers there’s no ammunition. A bystander offering to help turns out to be completely useless. He even clumsily bonks his head on the metal shelving he uses as cover from all the bullets. He basically can’t count on any of the cheat codes protagonists usually get by on in these situations. By the time those do kick in, you can feel the movie exhausting its creativity.
Boy Kills World only has so many moves, after all. They’re spectacular but limited.