Describe This Movie In One Megadeth Lyric:
DAVE MUSTAINE: Killing is my business, and business is good.Brief Plot Synopsis: Vengeance is a dish best served [checks notes] with a ... cheese grater?
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 pineapples under the sea out of 5.
Tagline: N/A
Better Tagline: "And another one gone, and another one gone."
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Following the murder of his mother and sister by the tyrannical Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the deaf-mute Boy (Bill Skarsgård) is trained to be a machine of perfect vengeance by Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). Can one man take on a totalitarian state? Did you just start watching movies?
"Critical" Analysis: Consider Bill Skarsgård for a moment. He's not even the most famous Skarsgård: dad Stellan has been making movies for over 50 years, and older brother Alexander is generally more recognizable, having stayed with more traditionally hunky roles. But Bill's penchant for picking weird shit is more in keeping with dad's career choices.
Aside from Pennywise in It and roles in Barbarian and Deadpool 2, he'll also be playing the role originated by Brandon Lee in the Crow remake, and Count Orlock in Robert Eggers's Nosferatu. The guy's up for pretty much anything, in other words.
Now, in Boy Kills World, Skarsgård plays the titular Boy. Plucked from certain death at the hands of the Van Der Koys (no relation) by the mysterious Shaman (Yayan Ruhian), Boy is rendered deaf and mute by the trauma he's endured, but is still capable of training in the deadly arts (the montage is Conan the Barbarian with a schmear of Bloodsport).
The voice in Boy's head (and our narrator) is H. Jon Benjamin of Archer and Bob's Burgers fame, just in case you weren't aware this was a comedy. Benjamin's an acquired taste, but the deadpan delivery certainly contrasts the onscreen mayhem.
And what mayhem. Modern fight choreography is thing of beauty, and having two bona fide martial arts masters in your cast (Ruhian and Warrior's Andrew Koji) doesn't hurt. Ruhian's Shaman is an abusive instructor in the best Pai Mei tradition, but one has to ask: why in the world would you include Koji and not let him kick twelve kinds of ass?
There's plenty to go around, after all, including for Happy Death Day's Jessica Rothe as Van Der Koy head of security "June 27."
The Van Der Koys are an odd choice for the ultimate rulers of a possibly post-apocalyptic dystopia. Bickering, largely incompetent, and obsessed with positive PR, you could argue they're an alternate reality version of the Trumps. Sharlto Copely (as Glen Van Der Koy) looks like a dessicated Chris Evans, and it's nice to see Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery sinking her teeth into a villain role (Glen's sister(?) Melanie).
Director Moritz Mohr reportedly drew inspiration for Boy Kills World from the movies he watched when he worked as a video store clerk, a fact that brings up a few questions. For one, the list of people who can list "video clerk" on their resumes has to be a shrinking one.
Second, maybe Mohr should have watched something besides kung fu and comic book movies. Plot-wise, Boy Kills World broadly draws from The Hunger Games and the facile revolutionary machinations of The Running Man. But it's all mere background for the violence. Cool violence, to be sure, but it gets wearying by the second act, and even a surprise "twist" does little to invigorate things.
Also? Boy comes nowhere close to "killing the world." The body count *maybe* approaches John Wick 2 numbers, but hardly an entire planet's worth.
Boy Kills World is in theaters today.
