What are the chances that actor Sharlto Copley would play an exploitational entertainment host in not one, but two 2024 revenge thrillers? First there was Monkey Man, and now there’s Boy Kills World.
Boy Kills World takes place in a universe where everything is ruled by one family, the matriarch of which, Hilda Van Der Koy (X-Men’s Famke Janssen) rounds up her enemies every year and executes them during a campy televised spectacle called “The Culling” (of course, hosted by Copley).
If this sounds a bit like The Hunger Games, well, that’s because it is. Boy Kills World is very similar to the concept of The Hunger Games.
Back to Boy Kills World, though. A nameless deaf and mute young man, only referred to as Boy in the credits (Barbarian’s Bill Skarsgård), had his family killed by Hilda, and has spent his entire life being mentored by a Shaman (Yayan Ruhian from The Raid) to prepare for his revenge. And when the time is right…he sets out to get it, encountering both enemies and allies along the way.
Writer/director Moritz Mohr and co-writer Arend Remmers adapted their short film of the same name into Boy Kills World with the help of screenwriter Tyler Burton Smith (who wrote the serviceable Child’s Play remake a few years back). It’s a typical revenge movie, with a few fun twists that are also somewhat typical of the genre. The plot is derivative, but the stunt choreography is great. And that’s the main reason people watch these revenge thrillers, right?
What really sets Boy Kills World apart from other revenge movies is, for lack of a better word, its modernism. At times, it feels like a video game, with Boy facing more and more threatening and capable adversaries while working his way up to the Final Boss. His internal voice narration even sounds like a video game announcer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin from Bob’s Burgers and Archer) since it’s been so long since he’s heard his own voice, and he has no idea what it sounds like so he just makes it up in his head.
One of these adversaries that Boy faces is a badass named June 27 (Jessica Rothe from Happy Death Day), a hatchet-wielding assassin who wears a motorcycle helmet that displays phrases and comments on its face shield (which is convenient, as the deaf Boy can tell at least partially figure out what she is saying and thinking). She’s a good foil for Boy, and their meetings (yes, plural) provide some of the more memorable sequences in the movie.
As a dystopian thriller, Boy Kills World is very lighthearted, almost whimsical in nature. That doesn’t make it any less violent, it’s just that the world in which it takes place isn’t built up enough for the audience to really empathize with the downtrodden people living within it. There is no backstory given as to why things are the way they are, and very little about what Hilda and the rest of the Van Der Koy family have done to the people short of publicly executing their enemies. The movie is more about Boy’s quest than it is about the environment itself. That makes it more akin to The Running Man than it is to The Hunger Games.
Boy Kills World is not Oldboy. Heck, it’s not even Monkey Man. But it is a brutally violent revenge quest that is a lot of fun to watch. And Fun is something that movies like Oldboy and Monkey Man don’t have. Boy Kills World doesn’t take itself as seriously as those other payback movies. Audiences can laugh at the broken bones and bullet holes, and therein lies its charm.
GRADE: B-
MPAA Rating: R for sexual references, language, gore, some drug use, and strong bloody violence
Running Time: 1 hour 51 minutes
Release Date: April 26, 2024
Distributor: Roadside Attractions
