Film Review — Boy Kills World
Mortiz Muhr’s brutally violent revenge actioner fails to raise much excitement
As Vyvyan from cult BBC sitcom The Young Ones once said: “Even mindless violence seems boring today.” That certainly applies to Boy Kills World; yet another ultra-violent revenge action film cut from a similar cloth to the likes of John Wick (2014), Monkey Man (2024), and various Quentin Tarantino films, but with a try-hard attempt at offbeat eccentricity that’s clearly hoping for cult status. I’m not sure posthumous audiences will bestow such a hallowed honour on this largely tedious watch, but who knows? Plenty of dreadful films wind up with a cult following, as it isn’t really about the quality of the film in question; The Room (2003) being the ultimate example.
Set in a half-baked dystopian city with plot elements cut and pasted from The Hunger Games (2012) as well as the aforementioned revenge flicks, the film introduces the titular “Boy” (Bill Skarsgård, with Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti playing younger versions of the character). Following the murder of his mother (Rolanda Marais) and beloved younger sister (Quinn Copeland) at the hands of villainous dictator Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) during one of her “cullings”, Boy is rescued and then trained by a random shaman in a forest (Yayan Ruhian) to take revenge. Boy is also…
