‘Boy Kills World’ Review: Mortal Kombat Meets Scott Pilgrim

Ever since John Wick took audiences by storm in 2014 there has been many attempts to recapture that same lightning in a bottle franchise. Just earlier this month there was Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man and now Bill Skarsgård fights his way into the arena with Boy Kills World. The premise is simple; Boy’s entire family is killed, and he spends his life training to get his revenge those responsible. Boy Kills World changes up the formula by making the main character deaf and mute and embracing a more comedic but hyper violent approach to its action and story. While it doesn’t always work and the plot could use a bit more of a voice, the action and humor are loud enough to deliver an entertaining addition to the genre.

Following the death of his mother and sister at the hands of Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), Boy (Bill Skarsgård) trains under a mysterious shaman (Yayan Ruhian) until a time when he is strong enough to kill her. She is the head of a corrupt family that kills and exploits the innocent for entertainment; a deadly yearly spectacle called The Culling where randomly selected citizens are thrown into an arena and killed in front of a live audience. It’s supposed to keep society in check, but Boy has had enough and will do whatever it takes to kill Hilda and her entire family.

Boy is both deaf and mute thanks to Hilda’s tortue, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming stronger. Rather than just stick to visuals, Boy Kills World enlists H. Jon Benjamin as Boy’s inner voice. He has a memory of him and his sister playing a fighting game at an arcade together and the game’s announcer is what he remembers most so he adopts it as his own. As expected, there is a good deal of narration and voice over to the film, and it works quite well. Bill Skarsgård is a great physical actor, both in the fighting scenes and in the quieter moments where he just has to stand there and react to a conversation going on. Most of the humor comes from H. Jon Benjamin’s voice over who always explains what Boy is thinking. It’s a little distracting at first because his voice is so recognizable as Archer, Bob Belcher, Coach McGuirk, or any of the other voice roles he’s done since he uses the same voice for practically everything. But once you get past that it works. There’s an ongoing gag where he can’t read the lips of his resistance member teammate Benny (Isaiah Mustafa) due to his bushy beard. So all of Mustafa’s dialogue is complete gibberish and some of the scenes are reimagined to fit the absurdity that Boy “hears.”

Boy Kills World feels like stepping into the mind of a deeply troubled person and watching their fever dream play out in their head. It’s wild and chaotic and doesn’t make much sense a lot of the time. The Culling is sponsored by a children’s cereal so all this murder and bloodshed is carried out by colorful cartoon mascots. Boy is guided by a vision of his dead sister who acts similar to his conscience as she distracts him from what’s going on in front of his eyes. Boy has fond memories of playing video games with his sister so everything he does somewhat ties back to that. This revenge mission of his is just one big game of sorts as he moves through the stages and defeats the ever increasingly difficult bosses before coming face-to-face with the final boss. The music, the fighting stances, and the style all match this video game aesthetic. In that manner, it feels like a bloodier and more violent version of Scott Pilgrim, embedding these video game elements into its realistic world.

Even with all the chaos happening in the film, the story itself is still very straight-forward. His family is dead and he wants revenge. That’s all there is to know. There isn’t much background given to this post-apocalyptic world that they all live in where a bloody murder event is necessary to keep the peace. Or who Hilda Van Der Koy is and how her family came to be the ones in charge. There are a few predictable twists and turns in the back half of the film, but they don’t matter all that much. The story is just there to quickly get you from one fight scene to the next. It doesn’t matter who or why Boy facing next so much as what manner of beatdown he’ll be giving and receiving.

While the story may be lacking, Boy Kills World makes up for it with its Mortal Kombat style of action. Boy joyously screams “Fatality!” in his mind at one point. The fights are all choreographed and shot beautifully and brutally. It’s an absolute bloodbath at times. Again like a video game, the fights go well beyond the limits of reality. The majority of these characters would die from blood loss long before their fights are over. At one point Boy grabs a cheese grater and you can easily imagine the bloody mess he leaves behind. Like the Culling itself, it’s all for entertainment.

Boy Kills World doesn’t reach the lofty heights set by its inspiration, but it does offer up an adrenaline-fueled fighting match that’s worthy of a few quarters. Great action and solid humor do much of the heavy lifting as the story leaves a lot to be desired. Still, if you’re craving for a fight, Boy Kills World is ready for a few rounds.