Boy Kills World is a litmus test for fans of video game-inspired movies

26.04.2024 - 23:05 / polygon.com / Edgar Wright / Bill Skarsgård

The most crucial thing to know going into the action-thriller Boy Kills World is that it eventually features a phenomenally bloody fight scene — a brutal extended throwdown where faces are smashed, fingers purposefully dig into open wounds, and combatants slowly drag a sharp object through each other’s bodies, ripping through skin and muscle with a tactile squelch. It’s a fight so grueling and brutal that even seasoned action-movie veterans might clench their teeth and mutter in reflexive empathy.

But while squeamish viewers will want to know how messy the movie gets so they can steer clear, everyone else will want to know what to expect because Boy Kills World otherwise seems so weightless, goofy, and far from reality that it lacks any kind of serious combat stakes. The smirky way director Moritz Mohr frames combats around video game references — complete with voice-over narration saying things like “Fatality!” and “Player two wins!” — doesn’t exactly prepare viewers for a face-off where the combatants’ pain meaningfully matters and the characters actually seem to be getting hurt.

But that final fight gives Boy Kills World more weight than the rest of its run time, and opens it up to action and martial arts fans who might otherwise be put off by the movie’s strident, referential humor. The film was largely built strictly for a specific brand of video game movie fans: It’s a checklist of retro beat-’em-up references and meta comedy tropes that some audiences are inevitably going to find broad, excessive, and off-putting, and some are going to find playful and energizing.

This isn’t quite Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, with its pop-up “Pow!” and “Kerblam!” animated effects for big hits, or its antagonists exploding into coin-drop victory rewards at the end of every fight. But it’s just about as silly and surfacey, with world-building that’s little more than an apathetic shrug, and a plot that’s largely an excuse for creatively staged fights that range from dopey humor to surreal mind game to that final, surprisingly serious battle.

Bill Skarsgård stars as the otherwise unnamed Boy, a tragic victim, comically hapless doofus, and world-class combatant whose skills were honed through years of jungle training with The Shaman (martial arts movie stalwart Yayan Ruhian, of The Raid: Redemption andThe Raid 2). Boy is none too bright and painfully naïve, and he’s all-in on the mission The Shaman has given him: to take down Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen), the totalitarian figurehead ruling their country.

Naturally, she has a small army of well-armed mooks and a monstrous family Boy has to battle his way through as he climbs the ladder to avenge the family she took from him — including his