A Hilarious Splatterfest
Summary
Boy Kills World does drag out its limited premise a little, but it still manages to be filled with some laugh out loud moments mixed with over the top violence and one of the best final fight scenes of the year.
Plot: A fever dream action film that follows Boy, a deaf person with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, he is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.
Review: Sometimes you come across a movie that you know will be hard to review as it feels like this is the exact story the director was wanting to tell; whether it’s everyone’s cup of tea or not remains to be seen.
Boy Kills World is easily the craziest action movie of the year; it is at times hilarious while also being a glorious splatterfest filled with over the top, violent fight scenes feeling like a cartoon or graphic novel brought to life.
At just under 2 hours, it does begin to wear out its welcome as the premise is thin and doesn’t really stretch past the 90-minute mark. It’s a straightforward revenge tale with some nice stylistic flourishes and the voiceover for the main character known as “Boy” (Bill Skarsgård) provides most of the laughs.
Skarsgård looks to be in the best shape of his life as he clearly prepared for the role and is totally ripped in this movie. He gets plenty of fight scenes however, they are a little shaky at times which I was hoping we were past by now.
Still, he is believable as Boy, and you are rooting for him all the way as he smashes, stabs, shoots and even uses a cheese grater through his enemies. That scene is easily the action highlight for me although the final fight is still impressive.
It’s nice to see Yayan Ruhian (The Raid) get such a sizeable part which I think is his best Hollywood role to date. On a random note, I’m still annoyed that The Force Awakens introduced him and Iko Uwais and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing with them.
Any movie with Andrew Koji in it is immediately worth seeing as I consider one of the most interesting action stars in the business today; still, I wish he had more fight scenes as he felt a little underused. Sharlto Copley is as entertaining as ever and that’s two of this years big action pictures that he’s been a part of with this and Monkey Man where he steals nearly every scene.
Overall, Boy Kills World is at times a hilarious bloodbath of a film with some imaginative set-pieces and a bodycount surely in the triple digits. I see it becoming a cult classic in future years with people showing up to midnight screenings and cheering on the carnage. It’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen for full effect but it does go on a little too long, at least for me.
