Movie Review ~ Boy Kills World

Back in September, when I was in Canada for the Toronto International Film Festival, a few films were next to impossible to get into, no matter how much fancy finagling you attempted.  One of those movies was Boy Kills World, one of the infamous Midnight Madness selections that have become somewhat of a tradition at TIFF. Coming at the end of a long day of screenings when you can either call it a night and catch up on sleep before doing it all again tomorrow or join the raucous crowds to devour the quirky, weird, scary, and ballsy programming the festival has to offer, tickets were scarce. Unless you wanted to risk it with the rest of the public in the rush line, you were better off scoring some shut-eye.  I opted for an easy bedtime.  Sometimes, it’s good to go to bed early.  

Arriving with a promise to blend hyper-stylized violence with a poignant narrative, Boy Kills World aims to tell a tale as old as time – an unstoppable warrior enacts righteous vengeance upon the evildoers that wronged him – but quickly veers off into uncharted territory of gonzo ultraviolence that will give audiences a severe case of stylistic whiplash.   Reminding us of the delicate balance between style and substance, the resulting film from writer/director Moritz Mohr plays like an 80s Cannon Film welded together with the delirious maximalism of both entries in the Kill Bill saga as well as 2012’s The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 sequel.

The thin plot follows a straightforward, well-trodden narrative path of the revenge flick formula.  When his family is decimated in a brutal attack that’s part of a yearly ritual carried out by the henchmen of a powerful crime syndicate, Boy narrowly escapes the same fate.  Saved by a mysterious Shaman (Yayan Ruhian, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens) who raises and trains Boy to become a ripped and deadly killing machine resembling Bill Skarsgård (Barbarian), he vows retribution toward Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen, GoldenEye) for the role she played in killing his parents and sister.

This journey of retaliation against the villainous Van Der Koys is narrated through an inner voice from Boy’s memories of an 8-bit childhood video game.  I credit the screenplay by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers even attempting this unique auditory perspective on Boy’s silent world, which adds to its often-bonkers irreverence. Yet, the gimmick translates onscreen with varying degrees of success.  At its TIFF premiere, the film was initially narrated by Skarsgård’s more emotionally centered performance, but the filmmakers have opted to use the secondary track they recorded with H. Jon Benjamin for the wide release.  

Though gifted with an imposing presence that seems intrinsically tied to the lineage of his family name, in Boy Kills World, Skarsgård’s efforts to give depth to the role get lost within the endless splatter violence and absurdist carnage that spills out for close to two increasingly obnoxious hours.  Eventually, you become numbed by its pulverizing approach to fight sequences, with most blending from one to another and appearing interchangeable.  It’s odd that for a film with such a relentless pace, it feels long before the first thirty minutes have crawled by.  

The breakneck pace also swallows up the other performers, with Janssen (so good at playing these wicked characters) not getting as much scenery to chew on as possible.  That’s partly because much of her work is on green screen but also due to the script not having much imagination outside of the knuckle punches to the solar plexus it begins to toss around.  Other usually appealing actors like Jessica Rothe (Valley Girl), Michelle Dockery (The Gentlemen), and even the Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa (IT: Chapter Two) fall victim to the director and screenwriter having more fun storyboarding the fights than fleshing out their characters.

I’m all for directors taking a stylized approach to their films (that’s how guerilla filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez exploded onto the scene in the ‘90s), but Mohr’s influences are all over the map, from Japanese manga to first-person shooter games, all while evoking a grindhouse feel that leaves Boy Kills World bizarrely soulless.  Eventually, you realize Boy is simply battling another round of nameless meat sacks in bloody VFX skirmishes.  

What it lacks narratively, Boy Kills World more than makes up for in the technical areas, though.  Danielle Knox’s (Afterlife of the Party) costumes are colorful and inventive riffs on traditional fight attire, with the rugged motorcycle leather of the rough and tumble fighters blending with the more delicately sleek fabrics of the elite.  If Ludvig Forssell’s score often overwhelms, it at least drowns out some of the excessive sounds of gore as someone new has another limb hacked off. The cinematography from Peter Matjasko is weighed down by shoddy VFX and Mohr’s frenzied editing, but there’s clearly a vision behind his lens. 

In a market saturated with gritty revenge films and movies trying to capture a video game feel in live-action form, Boy Kills World ultimately misses the mark in its attempts to be a provocative action thrill ride and a commentary on the genre it’s trying to fit into. While the fight sequences and unique narrative perspective suggest a bold leap forward, it struggles to find a rhythm that resonates beyond its visually arresting spectacle.