When the point of a movie is excess, it becomes difficult to know when to stop. Boy Kills World is the perfect example: A pulpy, ultra-violent martial arts actioner, the first feature from director Moritz Mohr runs equally on snark and splatter. But where does the fun kind of overstimulation tip over into the exhausting kind? About 40 minutes into this 110-minute film, as it turns out.
The product of an international coalition of overgrown adolescents – made in South Africa by a German director, with a Swedish star leading a largely American cast – Boy Kills World stuffs every action-movie trope it can think of into its dystopian world, and then some. At times, it plays like a hyperactive tribute to the 1973 Japanese classic Lady Snowblood, in which a mute orphan undergoes a brutal training regimen that shapes her into a living instrument of violent revenge. At others, it’s more like a Hunger Games parody, with comedic strokes broad enough to make the Wayans brothers proud.
These clashing modes come together in the character of Boy (Bill Skarsgård), whose sole purpose for living is to kill dystopian dictator Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) after she murdered his family as part of an annual “culling” ceremony in which dissenters are dispatched on live TV. (Again, it’s all very Hunger Games, down to the Van Der Koys’ yellow-and-black flower sigil.) Since then, he’s lived in the jungle being groomed for revenge by a mysterious shaman (Yayan Ruhian) who keeps telling him that Hilda murdered his family, and now she must die. Finally, the opportunity comes when Boy infiltrates another culling ceremony in the capital — a city whose medieval and futuristic elements are crammed together haphazardly, placing Middle Eastern-style outdoor markets next to old-school video arcades.
There are a few points where Boy Kills World’s untamed imagination reaches its full potential, as in the scene where Boy fights for his life on a massive TV soundstage against an army of cereal mascots. Unfortunately, however, most of the movie is held back by its own juvenile sense of humor. H. Jon Benjamin, a wonderful actor with a delightful (and recognizable from dozens of animated projects) voice, narrates in the guise of Boy’s “inner monologue.” A great idea, in theory. In practice, it means massive chunks of explanatory voiceover in the first 15 minutes or so, and then a string of profane wisecracks throughout the rest. If you like the idea of following a character through a long, technically complicated tracking shot, only to have that character look straight at the camera and think, “oh, fuck,” get ready: You’ll have that experience half a dozen times.
It’s all kind of fun at first, but despite the fantastical framing, the actual storyline of Boy Kills World is repetitive and predictable, right up to a twist that derails the proceedings both tonally and narratively. (That’s a nice way of saying that it makes no goddamn sense.) There’s a lot of action and not a lot of thought going on here, which would be fine if there wasn’t so much plot as well.
The problem isn’t Skarsgård, who at times has the physicality of a young Jean-Claude Van Damme (a supreme compliment). It’s not Janssen, who manages to wring a few hard-earned drops of believability out of her absurd character. You can’t even lay the blame on any of the supporting players, although their roles are uniformly one-note: Brett Gelman, Sharlto Copley, Michelle Dockery, and Happy Death Day’s Jessica Rothe all chew the scenery as members of the villainous Van Der Koy clan.
Boy Kills World proves that there can be too much of a good thing.
“
The issue is more that Mohr has no sense of moderation – again, something that shouldn’t be a problem in a film that’s predicated on action overkill. But his approach, while enthusiastic, ends up undermining the very things that should make Boy Kills World a blast. Take the comic-book bloodshed: Early on in Boy’s rampage, a minor villain has her arms chopped off, and she screams and waves her stumps around as blood sprays everywhere. Cool! But a modest scope chafes against excessive aims when Mohr starts employing CGI blood to fill in the gap between his effects budget and his ambition, culminating in some painfully fake-looking splatter.
Similarly, the hand-to-hand combat is a delirious mishmash, with some scenes featuring long, unbroken choreography and others filmed so illegibly that it’s impossible to see what’s going on. It’s a film that’s so preoccupied with looking cool in the moment, it completely forgets about creating a coherent whole. With so many creative kills on screen, it’s ironic that Boy Kills World is done in by self-inflicted wounds.
