I like a good revenge thriller. They can be very exciting and entertaining all at the same time. The French thriller Revenge and the Kill Bill Films come to mind when thinking about great revenge movies. Most recently, Monkey Man written/directed/starring Dev Patel came out, and that brought an entirely different vibe to the revenge film. The latest movie that has a revenge plot in it is Boy Kills World, starring Bill Skarsgard. It’s just as bloody and violent as Monkey Man was but has a more fictitious story at its core.

The Culling was an event that was designed as a way to get rid of the undesirables and bad elements in the world. As part of that, a little boy and his sister were left without a mother.  She was adopted by another family while he was taken in by a Shamen, and trained to be a killing machine, so he could take revenge on Hilda van der Koy (Famke Jansen) and her elitist family. It’s not as easy as he thinks it is. There are a lot of obstacles in his way. Things also get a little confusing in his mind regarding the right and wrong of this situation. 

Director Moritz Mohr and writers Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers have crafted quite a story with this revenge thriller. There are some dystopian aspects to the story as well as events that reminded me of The Hunger Games and other post-apocalyptic stories. The family’s guards and the various statues of the matriarch of the ruling family are indicators of a lot of fictional storylines in comics or other literary works. This is a very familiar story in a lot of ways.

Mohr has assembled a great cast of character actors in all of the supporting roles. Besides Bill Skarsgard as the Boy, there are so many roles such as Glen van der Koy (Sharlto Copley), Gideon van der Coy (Brett Gelman) June 27(Jessica Rothe) Melanie van der Koy (Michelle Dockery) Hilda van der Koy (Famke Jansen) which are all the members of the ruling family. And Basho (Andrew Koji) Mentor (Yayan Ruhian) who are the Boy’s friends, and Mina (Quinn Copeland) is his sister who he sees in his imagination; she says she makes everything better. H Jon Benjamin is the narrator who is the voice inside the Boy’s head. Everybody is great in their respective roles. This cast is beyond good.

With a story such as this, you know there is going to be a lot of violence and blood spilled. The Boy goes through quite a few of Jansen’s character’s hired guards and her family members on the way to get to her. He even gets himself bloodied and injured in the process, and his friends have ended up in similar circumstances. One character even gets his head smashed in by a heavy vice. There is just so much violence in this movie that it’s almost unbearable to watch, but that’s what you get with revenge films such as this.

Im a big fan of the Rocky films and that franchise has used training montages to great effect. This movie does the same. There is about a third of the film where the Boy lives and trains with the Shamen. He is pretty hard on him, but it’s a good thing because it helps the Boy become who he was meant to be in the end. The Shamen or Mentor however you would describe him proves to be an important part of the story, so his training sequences are very important as well. These worked well for the progression of the Boy’s character. Skarsgard killed these scenes.

Bill Skarsgard, the brother of Alexander and the Son of Stellan, has been making a name for himself playing characters hidden behind makeup in the It films. Lately, he has been himself in his latest roles in John Wick 4, albeit with a French accent, and Barbarian, a horror film with creepy monsters. Once again, he plays a semi-normal-looking man even though he’s covered with blood for a lot of the film. He owns this role as the Boy. He doesn’t speak, but that doesn’t matter; he kicks plenty of ass. He is coming into his own as an actor.

Boy Kills World is a fever dream of a movie. It takes similar themes we’ve seen before and spins them into a crazy dystopian family drama. With plenty of action, violence, blood, and guts to go around. Buckets of blood, for that matter. The cast is hamming it up in most of these roles. Skarsgard, though, is taking every minute of this film to be as crazy as he can be. He is fantastic without saying a word. The writers and director have made a fun revenge thriller. I’m sure most people will love it, but I, on the other hand, merely just liked it. It’s just a little too familiar to other movies I’ve seen in the past for my liking.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen