Bill Skarsgård in Boy Kills World

An unexpected treat! A surprise delight! Sharlto Copley pops up in Boy Kills World mere weeks after appearing in Monkey Man. We Copley-heads are really dining out! 

Boy Kills World is a bonkers action/thriller/comedy/satire that stars Bill Skarsgård as the titular “boy”, a nameless assassin who has spent his life training for the moment he can finally kill the evil dystopian overlord, Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen). The boy is deaf and mute after a cruel childhood attack, he can no longer remember what his internal monologue sounded like, so he imagines his inner voice as that belonging to a video game he played as a kid. H. Jon Benjamin provides the boy’s voice, continuing the Archer tradition of H. Jon Benjamin voicing a super handsome character on screen.

Boy Kills World is basically the Wet Hot American Summer of revenge flicks, and I don’t say that just because H. Jon Benjamin provides voice over. Like Wet Hot, Boy Kills World has an intimate understanding of genre and satire, and with a completely straight face presents a farcical deconstruction of its target genre, in this case, revenge thrillers. The film, directed by Moritz Mohr and written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers (based on a short film by Remmers and Mohr), launches directly into the, er, action, as we meet the boy training with the shaman (Yayan Ruhian), buried alive and eating bugs as a child (twins Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti play the young boy).

In flashbacks, we learn the boy’s origin story, how his mother was killed in “The Culling”, an annual tradition meant to rid their nameless city of dissidents who rebel against Hilda Van Der Koy’s fascistic leadership. His little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), is also killed, though she appears to the boy as a hallucination. One day while in town, Hilda’s loser children arrive to round up victims for The Culling, which ends in a massacre that spurs the boy into action, going on a one-man mission to finally kill Hilda. He is ultimately joined by Basho (Andrew Koji) and Bennie (Isaiah Mustafa), all that’s left of a rebellion effort.

As he cannot hear, the boy relies upon reading lips, but he cannot read Bennie’s lips, and in one of the film’s best gags, he hears utter nonsense whenever Bennie talks. It’s a device used just enough to remain funny whenever it occurs. There are a lot of gags in Boy Kills World, ranging from graphic gross out gags to solid physical humor in the tradition of Harol Lloyd and Buster Keaton. It’s a little bit like if the John Wick movies were more humorous. There are some darker emotional beats later in the film, but Boy Kills World works best when it’s combining satire and stunts. 

Skarsgård effectively sells the boy’s physicality, the film has excellent action sequences designed by stunt coordinator Grant Hulley that incorporate everything from gymnastics to cheese graters. There’s a swirly-whirly drone sequence that goes on a little too long, but stylistically, Boy Kills World is like a pop-art spin on the bone-crunching action that has been popularized over the last fifteen years. Another standout is Jessica Rothe (who should be a WAY bigger deal by now), who sports a Daft Punk helmet and rockin’ abs as June27, Hilda’s top enforcer. Rothe and her stunt double (Jacqueline Lee Geurts) are helmeted much of the time, but when she needs to, Rothe takes off the helmet and matches Skarsgård for intensity.

The film also stars Brett Gelman as Hilda’s adult failson and Michelle Dockery chewing the hell out of the scenery as Hilda’s super-fascist daughter. Everyone is having a blast and even when the film takes a turn for the darker, Boy Kills World never loses its sense of knuckle-bashing verve. It doesn’t quite stick the landing—the satire is sacrificed for that darker emotional turn—but Boy Kills World is a mostly good film that features great action and unhinged performances. As a sendup of revenge thrillers and the stoic hero so often at the center of them, it’s surprisingly sly. Plus! Sharlto Copley!

Boy Kills World is now playing exclusively in theaters.