Movies
“Boy Kills World” Steps In Its Own Creativity
Boy Kills World (2024) ‘s unique premise roped me in, but a crazy idea does not guarantee proper, entertaining execution.
“A fever dream action film that follows Boy, a deaf person with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, he is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.”
Director: Moritz Mohr
Writers: Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers, Moritz Mohr
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Roth, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Yayan Ruhian, H. Job Benjamin, Sharlto Copley, Andrew Koji, Famke Janssen
Release Date: April 26, 2024
IMDB
Boy Kills World (2024) ‘s unique premise roped me in, but a crazy idea does not guarantee proper, entertaining execution.
Bill Skarsgård stars as Boy, a young man without the ability to talk. Verbal communication is not big for Boy, but inner monologues are all the rage. The audience connects with Boy via the voice of H. Jon Benjamin, AKA his inner conscience. H. Jon Benjamin, for those who don’t know, is a world-famous voice actor known mostly for his talents as Archer on FX’s Archer.
Together, the tandem of Skarsgård’s physicality and Benjamin verbal wit, take the audience through a blood-filled, over-the-top revenge tale. And when I say blood-filled, I mean it. Boy Kills World spares no expense with the violence. Honestly, it’s jarring. The advertising for the movie made it seem like a video game and somewhat drug-infused in terms of the story and the ancillary characters, but nothing shown could have prepared for the gruesome thrashing and bashing.
Do you know how horror movies often have more gore than necessary to prove a point or give the audience what they want? That is somewhat what Boy Kills World does. It’s like the later Saw movies.
Boy Kills World is confident in itself, similar to how an average student is overconfident about his science fair project. It’s as if there is a class presentation, and the presenter is so jazzed up because he thinks his volcano is a sure-fire winner, but in reality, the student’s written portion is riddled with grammatical errors, and the proportions for his experiment are all wrong. It’s like, in the end, there is a finished product that does resemble what the teacher assigned, but everything is colored outside the lines.
The part of Boy Kills World that gets the harshest failing grade from me is anything involving Mina (Quinn Copeland), the sister of Boy, whom he presumes is dead. Mina is a figment of his imagination, and for the first two-thirds of the movie, she is everywhere. Mina is affecting Boy’s decisions, and he is constantly talking with her. It’s a choice to include that personally seemed like too much.
If there is one positive part of Boy Kills World, its the casting of the family associated with Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the ruthless ruler of the corrupt empire that The Boy thrives to fight against. There are a series of recognizable faces who all behave like children while dressed in adult clothing. None of them are to be taken seriously, but their family banter (or roasts more like it) provides some of the most comedic aspects.
At the time of my writing this, it would appear that Bill Skarsgård needs a win. The reviews for Boy Kills World were middling, and now The Crow (2024) has just been released in theaters with nothing but bad press. We could go back to 2023 when Skarsgård went over-the-top as Marquis in John Wick: Chapter 4, but it’s important to note he was playing the villain and not the main character. Pulling off the leading man in a pure action movie takes different talents. I am not saying that Skarsgård can’t get there, but his first two attempts are wayward.
As of mid-September 2024, Boy Kills World is not streaming anywhere.
STANKO RATING: D
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