‘Boy Kills World’ is a zany, hyperviolent good time

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Hey, wait a minute… this isn’t a sequel to Boy Meets World!

In Boy Kills World, Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) and her family rule their city with an iron fist.

Once a year, they hold a televised event known as The Culling, where 12 citizens are publicly executed.

Boy (Bill Skarsgård), his mother, and his sister fall victim to The Culling, but Boy survives, ending up deaf and mute.

For the next two decades, he lives with a mysterious Shaman (Yayan Ruhian) who trains Boy’s mind and body to get revenge on the Van Der Koy family.

Hollywood has been pumping out movies based on video games for decades, but with the success of recent films like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy’s, they seem to be keener than ever to bring more to the big screen.

I enjoy a good adaptation (good being the keyword), but do you know what I enjoy even more? Totally original ideas that are inspired by video games!

Less than five minutes into Boy Kills World’s runtime, you know exactly what type of a movie you’re going to get: a ridiculous action movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, complete with insane violence and gore, irreverent, sarcastic humor, and a tone and attitude that’s aggressively in your face.

In the universe of Boy Kills World, violence and fighting people are simply a way of life. Everything is about as exaggerated as it can be, truly feeling like a fighting or beat ‘em up video game come to life.

Our hero, Boy, can’t hear or speak, so we’re treated to his inner thoughts throughout as he tries to understand what’s going on around him.

He can’t remember what his voice used to sound like, so he replaces it with the voice of an announcer (H. Jon Benjamin) from a fighting video game he used to play with his sister.

Benjamin’s unique, goofy voice perfectly captures Boy’s naïve look at the world that he views through a video game lens. With so many goofy lines, only someone like Benjamin could pull them all off, even during some of the more dramatic scenes.

Having our lead character be a deaf mute was a very clever decision, as it really makes Boy’s character feel unique from other action protagonists.

While action heroes with disabilities aren’t exactly a new thing, the way Boy is written, combined with Skarsgård’s performance, gives him a little bit of depth.

Since we’re constantly hearing his inner monologue, we always know what he’s thinking, what his next move will be, or what he’s feeling in the moment. It’s exposition done in the most entertaining way possible.

He also has the ability to read lips, which not only adds to uniqueness, but it’s used for actual narrative and comedic effect.

One character has a beard that obscures his mouth, so everything Boy perceives him to say is complete gibberish.

While characters converse, Boy intently watches the conversation, moving around them like a snake, examining their body language and the way their lips move.

Even when he’s “responding” in his head, he moves his face and body in a way like he feels like he’s having a real conversation.

It’s a great performance from Skarsgård that shows his abilities when it comes to acting with no dialogue, and he clearly put a lot of thought into it.

He’s a very physical actor, which also comes through in the fight scenes.

He didn’t do all of his own stunts or take the big hits (which I have no problem with), but he’s a more than convincing action star who can carry a movie, even with technically no dialogue.

I haven’t seen Jessica Rothe in anything since Happy Death Day 2U back in 2019, so I was happy to see her show up here.

I think she’s one of the most talented actresses working right now, and she deserves to be on the level of someone like Emma Stone.

She has loads of charisma and brings humanity to her performances, even when her character is a motorcycle helmet-wearing soldier wielding axes.

Rothe gets to actually speak real dialogue with her own voice, but there are long moments of time where she’s obscured by her motorcycle helmet that displays digitized words and emotions on the visor.

Even during these scenes, she gives her character June 27th a lot of personality.

Being the main enforcer for the Van Der Koy family, she’s vicious and walks with a forceful intent as she marches toward her victims to slaughter them.

Rothe showed in the Happy Death Day films that she’s an excellent final girl, but Boy Kills World presents her as an effective antagonist as well.

For a first-time directing effort, Moritz Mohr and his fight and stunt choreography team craft some inventive fight scenes with hilariously fun uses of environments and weapons.

Have you ever wanted to see a man get stabbed with a carrot picked from a snowman’s head? Then look no further.

The fight scenes are just as brutal as they are fun, with absurd amounts of gore and violence. I was wincing just as much as I was laughing.

The direction, staging, and editing of the action are solid but sometimes a bit too frenetic for its own good.

The camera whipping all around and the crazy cuts fit the movie’s style, but it could have been dialed back a bit to make the action slightly more coherent.

Also, some of these scenes were just so dang dark that I could hardly tell what was happening at times!

The final fight scene, however, is one of the most awesome and violent I’ve ever seen in an action film. It’s the only fight that doesn’t feel fun at all, just pure, raw, animalistic brutality.

Also, props must be given to these filmmakers for actually utilizing a star from the Raid films correctly.

Unlike Iko Uwais, who gets sidelined in like, every American film he stars in, Yayan Ruhian gets an epic fight scene more than worthy of his talents.

Everyone involved with this simply did a fine job of executing an exciting action film.

Also, like a video game, when it comes to plot and character motivations, everything here pretty much exists to just get us to the next level, erm, I mean, fight scene.

The narrative itself is pretty weak, with the stylish action, kookiness, and strong performances carrying it through to the finish line. It’s your pretty average revenge story with some obvious plot twists, although I give the filmmakers credit for having a few surprises along the way.

Despite that, there is a genuine tenderness that lies under all of the violence.

We’re constantly peering into Boy’s psyche, where he interacts with a hallucination of his little sister Mina (Quinn Copeland), who acts as a sort of sidekick in some scenes.

It’s all pretty goofy and mostly played for laughs, but it helps drive home the theme of this being a “two-player video game” and how both players can cooperate with each other.

When everything is resolved after one of the bloodiest fight scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie, I was surprised and satisfied that Mohr retained the emotional core.

All of the plotting and character motivations ended up being a bit contrived, but the heart is still there.

It’s one of those kinds of action films that can be described as “sweet” in both ways.

Unless you’re expecting Cory and Topanga to show up, Boy Kills World is a movie that lives up to its title 100%.

It’s not the most revolutionary thing out there and its style and violence can be a bit much for some people, especially the squeamish.

However, if you’re looking for an over-the-top action film that unashamedly wears its silly attitude on its sleeve, you’ll want to pop a quarter in and press START on this one.

Boy Kills World is currently playing in theaters nationwide.

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