Boy Kills World Movie Review

Boy Kills World (2023)

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Written by: Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers (screenplay), Arend Remmers & Moritz Mohr (screen story), Arend Remmers & Moritz Mohr (short film)
Directed by: Moritz Mohr
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Sharlto Copley, H. Jon Benjamin, Famke Janssen, Andrew Koji
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
After his family is murdered, Boy, deaf and mute with a vibrant imagination, is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.

Verdict
It's another revenge movie, but this maintains a dark humor through most of the movie that makes it more fun that the typical genre offerings. While that humor veers toward the crude, it enlivens the action. Big twists at the end keeps the interest high and explain away questions I was willing to write off due to the genre. I wasn't expecting much, but the wry sense of humor helps distinguish this.
It depends.

Review
The on the rails revenge sub-genre is getting crowded with a new vigor since John Wick. Was this going to be another mindless, skippable movie like The Beekeeper or Monkey Man , middling like Kate, or worth watching like Atomic Blonde or John Wick?

This doesn't do much world building other that showing us a despot that kills off her opposition every year. There isn't much context, but these killings are the origin story of Boy (Bill Skarsgård). He's trained in the jungle by the Shaman to one day avenge the deaths of his family. I had questions about Boy's origins that were later answered much to my surprise. I wondered how the Shaman found him and why he started training Boy. They can barely communicate which makes training difficult.

Bill Skarsgård, Andrew Koji play Boy, Basho

This has a wry sense of humor. Boy is mute so this employs a lot of voice over. Boy can't remember his voice so he states that he gave himself a cool inner voice after his favorite video game. Since he's grown up in the jungle, his introduction to civilized society presents numerous distractions from his mission. That and he has an imaginary friend that he often treats as real. The humor can veer towards the gross. There's an outlandish fight with Dave that's funny but dark as Dave just won't die. It almost seems like a Holy Grail homage.

Bill Skarsgård plays Boy

How does this world work? Why are people subservient when their deaths are imminent? You'd think they would revolt with little to lose. More than that, how did the Van Der Koy family rise to power? The violent setting is just the impetus for an on the rails action movie where Boy wants to avenge his family. Making him mute and deaf provides an intriguing impediment and a reason for a voice over that's constantly making jokes.

While there are a lot of movies in this sub-genre, this at least offers a unique approach. There's a lot of violence combined with a lot of humor. That dark humor stops at the last fight which is brutal, gruesome, and bloody. It's also much longer than you'd expect.