Action and comedy are usually the perfect combination because, let’s face it, who doesn’t want some laughs alongside a kick-ass action romp? Boy Kills World, a new film from producer Sam Raimi and first-time director Moritz Mohr, feels like it’s an amalgamation of various hit action flicks while also trying to create a satirical tone that directly winks at the audience. There’s clear inspiration from franchises like The Raid, Iron Sky, and Dragon Ball Z.

It boasts an exciting cast including Bill Skarsgård, Sharlto Copley, Michelle Dockery, and the incredibly talented Jessica Rothe. It also has a premise that promises an imaginative and genre-bending action B-movie that makes it the perfect Saturday night flick. At least, that is how it should be.

The titular character of Boy Kills World (Skarsgård) is a mute loner, whose mother was presumably killed by a fierce dictator, and he has since been raised in the jungle by a shaman (Yayan Ruhian). Seeking revenge for his poor life circumstances, Boy heads into the city to go on a bloody rampage, teaming up with several eccentric characters, both real and imaginary, including a young girl (Quinn Copeland) who dresses up as a fairy and waltzes into dangerous situations without batting an eye and the jaded Basho (Andrew Koji).

On paper, this all sounds like a radical film that’s ripe to become an action classic. Skarsgård has also been on quite the winning streak with Barbarian, John Wick: Chapter 4 and will soon be starring in high-profile films such as The Crow reboot and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. It’s almost as if nothing can stop him.

‘Boy Kills World’ Is More Obnoxious Than Fun
Image via TIFF

Boy Kills World kicks off with a comic book-style sequence telling the backstory of our quiet anti-hero, before cutting to narration from our character who isn’t supposed to talk. Yet he won’t shut up and is constantly trying to throw self-referential and self-deprecating jokes about being friends with beetles and having the worst luck imaginable. Skarsgård has the physicality of the role down, which should be a surprise to absolutely nobody, but the screenplay is conflicted on how it wants to use him. Is he supposed to be a humorless mute fighter or is he supposed to be a wise-cracking smartass narrator? The film can never fully decide.

Copley, who seems to have a knack for popping up in these kinds of genre films, is completely wasted in a blink-and-you-miss-it role as one of the film’s many villains. The true standout is Rothe as June 27, upstaging nearly everybody else in the cast playing one of the film’s only fascinating characters.

Films like Boy Kills World don’t come around too often, especially with this kind of ambition, but much of it feels like it is in on a joke that it expects everyone else to be in on with it. The problem is that it never gives the audience the context. Mohr uses Boy Kills World to throw everything but the kitchen sink at its audience. At the very least, his direction is far from bland. In fact, there’s almost an overabundance of style and flair to everything.

At nearly two hours, you also start to feel the film’s length, especially when a good chunk of the runtime is devoted to its charmless sense of humor. While the action and the craziness never leave the picture once the plot goes into high gear, you also get desensitized to it quite quickly, even as limbs start becoming dislocated and heads are slashed off.

‘Boy Kills World’ Has Some Brushes With Creativity

The world-building here is fascinating and has plenty of great potential. It’s the perfect setup for a dystopian B-movie, but much of that feels squandered by the fact that the filmmakers seem far more interested in just cracking jokes left and right that never once work. It is trying to get the audience to go along with its goofy nature, but it never attempts to give them time to adjust. Instead, Boy Kills World comes across as obnoxious, and the viewer already feels exhausted within the first 15 minutes of the film. It’s as if the creative team wanted to make a cult movie but completely forgot cult movies have to be fun.

It’s not even that the craftsmanship on display that is bad. The film’s production design and imagination are so zany and wonderful. From the jungle home of the shaman to the futuristic decaying city that Boy travels to, there’s so much passion put into these details. It’s just unfortunate that the screenplay never fully lives up it. There was a clear amount of effort put into creating this off-kilter world only for it to feel like a hodgepodge of different ideas.

There are several key moments in Boy Kills World that feel incredibly satisfying, including the second best use of a cheese grater in a film after Evil Dead Rise and a sequence featuring our hero facing off against a murderous army of cereal mascots. Most of the action is filmed satisfyingly. It’s never bogged down by the quick-cut editing and fog machines that populate so many mainstream action movies that premiere on the big screen and on streaming these days. It’s just that it also features the most grating and irritating humor that plays simultaneously during all the blood, violence, and chaos that is unfolding on-screen. This makes Mohr’s directorial debut a misfire that feels too confident with itself for its own good.

Rating: D+

The Big Picture

Boy Kills World is a film that tries to blend action and comedy but falls short, with a conflicted screenplay and an obnoxious sense of humor. The film boasts an exciting cast and an imaginative premise, but fails to deliver on its potential. While the world-building and production design are impressive, the film feels like a mishmash of different ideas and lacks cohesiveness.

Boy Kills World had its World Premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.