Boy Kills World movie storyline. From the opening exposition introducing dictatrix Hilda ven der Koy (Famke Janssen) as a “bitch” in need of elimination to the utterances of such amateur-hour profanities as “fuckpuppet” and “shitweasel,” a brutalizing lack of wit makes a slog out of a beat-‘em-up that aspires to a non-stop barrage of bone-breaking gutbusters.
For all its creativity about the different ways limbs can made to bend, the script faceplants in its dull quasi-adolescent sensibility that pairs the juvenile affinity for sugary cereals and Mortal Kombat with a more gratingly sophomoric stuntedness in humor. One imagines Deadpool looking down at his own hands in impotent horror, Oppenheimer-style, reckoning with what he hath wrought.
Our unnamed deaf-mute protagonist (Bill Skarsgård, his arms like rocket launchers) can communicate only in internal monologue voiceover that, despite the many tribulations he’s survived since the reigning junta killed his family, has the same oblivious cheerfulness as the puppy Will Ferrell voiced in last month’s Strays. And this Boy is a good dog indeed; from his older Asian mentor complicating a South African setting with a staunch refusal to consider its depiction of fascism relative to race, he’s learned to sit, stay, and make dead.
He’s got to fight through the royal stronghold on the night of the ruling family’s latest “culling,” working his way from one level to the next in a video game structure the script acknowledges with unclever mention of a “final boss.” The least tiresome passages come during these long arias of savagery, with Tilt-a-Whirl cinematography rushing to catch every laceration and headshot. State-of-the-art fight choreography, as well as a resourceful spirit that sees every prop as a potential weapon, have both been squandered in an otherwise repellent, paper-thin plotline building to a nonsensical twist.
Boy Kills World is a 2023 action thriller film directed by Moritz Mohr in his feature directorial debut from a screenplay by Arend Remmers and Tyler Burton Smith and a story by Mohr and Remmers. Produced by Sam Raimi and Roy Lee, it stars Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Yayan Ruhian, Isaiah Mustafa, and Andrew Koji. Filming took place in South Africa. The title is a reference to the unrelated sitcom Boy Meets World. The film premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, and is scheduled to be released in the United States on April 26, 2024, by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.
Boy Kills World (2024)
Directed by: Moritz Mohr
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Yayan Ruhian, Isaiah Mustafa, Andrew Koji, Famke Janssen, Brett Gelman, Sharlto Copley, Quinn Copeland, Michelle Dockery, Monica Angrand, Nena Butler
Screenplay by: Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers
Production Design by: Mike Berg
Cinematography by: Peter Matjasko
Film Editing by: Lucian Barnard
Costume Design by: Danielle Knox
Set Decoration by: Fred Du Preez
Art Direction by: Charis Baleson, Kirk Doman
Music by: Ludvig Forssell
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, language, some drug use and sexual references.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films, Roadside Attractions
Release Date: September 9, 2023 (TIFF), April 26, 2024 (United States)
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