Once again, my schedule was a bit tight, so I only had time for one new release this past weekend. Which one would I see? Go get caught up on that Guy Ritchie movie I skipped last week? That Zendaya-starring tennis love triangle thing? Sure, I could. Or I could go with what looked like the absolutely insane Boy Kills World, where a deaf-mute fighter goes to take down an evil dictator with H. Jon Benjamin’s distinctive voice narrating things in his head.
Yeah, I went for the crazy one again.
A deaf-mute known only as Boy (Bill Skarsgård) has a mission: kill the evil dictator Hilda van der Koy (Famke Janssen), ruler of a nameless city with her various siblings in supporting roles. Years earlier, Hilda was responsible for the deaths of Boy’s mother and younger sister Mina (Quinn Copeland). Something about the attack left Boy in that deaf-mute state since his childhood, and his inner voice (Benjamin) is the voice he used to hear from his favorite arcade game. Trained for years in a very brutal fashion by the Shaman (Yayan Ruhian), Boy feels the need to act before the next television Culling, a moment when Hilda eliminates twelve of her enemies on live television, an annual event.
To get his revenge, Boy will need to get through an endless number of goons as well as Hilda’s family, notably her sister Melanie (Michelle Dockery), who is in charge of the media; her brother Gideon (Brett Gelman), an aspiring writer and head of domestic security, and the badass, masked enforcer June 27 (Jessica Rothe). However, Boy does have some allies, but he also is operating off limited knowledge, like how he can’t always effectively read lips. But in the meantime, well, he sure knows how to dish out a beating.
Boys Kills World is not a great movie, but I don’t think anyone would go to something like this while thinking otherwise. It’s an absurd movie set in an absurd world, and the characters all seem to understand that the world they live in is their idea of normal. Skarsgård has a good, expressive face for a movie like this where the only sounds he makes is the occasional grunt. It’s the sort of movie where the hero will face off against cereal mascots in a Hunger Games sort of thing. The fight choreography is good, and while I can’t say the characters were all that deep, I don’t think this is the sort of movie where they need to be.
Basically, this is a movie where you need to be on its wavelength to really get into it. If you aren’t, it probably won’t work for you much at all. I was, and as a result, I found the movie to be a lot of fun. But it very much is the sort of thing that won’t be for everybody, and I would say if the description above works for you, then check it out. If it sounds too weird, I don’t think the theatrical experience is going to change your mind much since this movie is weird, and that’s basically the point. Quite frankly, I wish there was more weird stuff out there as it is.
Grade: B
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