Boy Kills World – Review

Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 50 minutes, Director – Moritz Mohr

Having been trained by a shaman (Yayan Ruhian) for many years, Boy (Bill Skarsgård) ventures back into the city to get revenge on the ruling Van Der Koy family for murdering his family.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Boy Kills World is a video game adaptation from the style of the various bloody fight sequences. It’s certainly the thought that came to mind as an initial Street Fighter-esque view appeared at the start of another scrap, before the camera begins to swirl around the action to bring about thoughts of other games. Bill Skarsgård’s Boy punches and shoots his way through a variety of henchmen on his way to the members of the Van Der Koy family, in charge of the city he once called home, to get revenge for the murder of his family many years before.

The Van Der Koys, particularly leader Hilda (Famke Janssen) are also responsible for Boy being deaf and mute. For initial festival screenings of the film Skarsgård provided the narration for his own character, however now properly released the character’s internal voice is that of H. Jon Benjamin – claimed to be the voice from Boy’s favourite arcade game growing up. There’s a feeling that Benjamin was brought in late to the film as his narration largely seems present to simply add context to one or two moments and make quips where there may be a slight pause. In general the dialogue he’s given is quite hit or miss and feels disjointed from a film which already feels somewhat disjointed with the elements not quite gelling together.

The premise is somewhat simple. Boy sees his chance to finally leave his isolated life in the woods, where he’s been trained since childhood by a shaman (Yayan Ruhian) to be able to get revenge on the Van Der Koys and intends to target them before the annual broadcast of The Culling – a live massacre of citizens who oppose the leaders. The Culling features many cheery, bulky mascots parading around to promote the breakfast cereal sponsors, a point which is amusing when first mentioned but become just another element very quickly. This is largely the case with Boy Kills World’s humour, the spark never quite manages to get above that.

Instead the focus is very much on how to get from one fight to another, and how to pick off the rival family. The latter certainly happens much more quickly than expected and shows that each member of the family almost acts as the progression of the narrative, almost a new plot point and development, over development of the central character which appears very late in the day; during the much more drawn out and less-pacey third act.

While there may be a lacking feeling to the narrative course, and indeed the attempts at humour, throughout the film there’s a contrasting sense of flow as things generally seem to go by fairly briskly, perhaps due to the simpler nature of the plot and the likable nature of the first few action sequences. However, it doesn’t stop things from eventually falling into a sense of blandness, and feeling overlong and winding in the final stages. Leading it to fall off the rails after travelling along them in a very gradual fashion up until it does.

While the fight sequences initially have a likable nature the video game style quickly wears off leading to its disjointed and simplistic course becoming much clearer and eventually drawn out and lacking.