Monday, 23 September 2024

VOD: Boy Kills World (dir: Moritz Mohr, 2024)

"Some things are hard to forget."

Boy Kills World is one of those movies that has cult status written all over it.  With his family killed when he was a child in an annual ritual societal event, The Culling, Boy is taken in and trained by a shaman and trained as an assassin, and as a mute/deaf adult he takes his bloody revenge.  The film hearkens back to the hard-boiled Asian action fight-fest movies that influenced Tarantino.  The insane action and violence displayed on screen is leavened by a strange cheesiness, largely created by Boy's inner-voice narration that mimics a videogame character, some darkly comic moments, a contrapuntally whimsical soundtrack and a Hunger Games-styled exaggerated ruling dynasty.  As the adult Boy, Bill Skarsgard - in the physical shape of his life - convinces as the purposeful killing machine and successfully engages without using speech.  The blood-soaked one-on-one final act showdown is relentlessly brutal, and overall Boy Kills World is a peculiar little film that works satisfactorily on its own terms within its own videogame-styled surreal little world.  Look out for the brief but interestingly-played end-of-credits scene.

 

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