Film / Boy Kills World

"Insert crazy action montage!"

Boy Kills World is a 2024 action comedy thriller film directed by newcomer Moritz Mohr and written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers. It stars Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Sharlto Copley, Andrew Koji, and Famke Janssen, with H. Jon Benjamin serving as the film's narrator.

When an attack by an evil tyrant (Janssen) renders him deaf, mute, and orphaned, young man (Skarsgård) sets out on a years-long revenge plan to gain a sweet inner voice (Benjamin), train himself up, and take revenge on the tyrant with the help of an unlikely team. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9th, 2023 and was released in theaters on April 26th, 2024.

Previews: Trailer; Red Band trailer

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Boy Kills World includes examples of the following:

• Acting Unnatural: While pretending to be a chef in Hilda's mansion, Boy's told to act like a chef by his hallucinated sister. He does so by absently grating cheese as he walks around the place.
• Actually a Doombot: Boy seems to kill Hilda rather early, only to learn he killed an actress.
• Advertising by Association: The trailer boasts the involvement of producers Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Don't Breathe, The Grudge) and Roy Lee (It, Barbarian).
• An Arm and a Leg: Darrel, whom Basho says "has a lot of problems", tears off his own arm after Boy gets his hand stuck in a vice.
  Boy: Player Two is fucking crazy!
• Bait-and-Switch: Melanie is furious with Boy for killing her husband... because he's the host for The Culling which is airing in a couple hours.
• Big Bad: Hilda Van Der Koy, the matriarch of a powerful, corrupt post-apocalyptic dynasty and is responsible for the murder of Boy's family.
• Bread and Circuses: The tradition of a yearly Culling of 'dissidents' was started by Hilda when the Van Der Koys first took power. In the years since, Melanie has added to the formula by making it a Rigged Spectacle Fight with Mascot Mooks and Product Placement.
• Children Forced to Kill: When his memories return, Boy realizes Hilda forced him to shoot the Shaman's family.
• Co-Dragons: Melanie, Gideon, and Glen, the first two being Hilda's siblings and the third being her brother-in-law, are her primary underlings.
  • Melanie is The Evil Genius and The Heavy who generally gives the orders, does most of the actual work of keeping the Van Der Koys in power and is the most prominent villain for much of the film since Hilda has become an erratic recluse.
  • Gideon is supposed to be The Brute as far as Melanie and Glen are concerned, but they allow him to write the regime's speeches to stop him complaining. He invariably produces overwrought nonsense that falls heavily into Non Sequitur and True Art Is Incomprehensible.
  • Glen is Melanie's Henpecked Husband and the Smarmy Host of her crowd-pleasingly bloodthirsty Culling events. Melanie's media wizardry maintains the entire family as Villains With Good Publicity, but none more so than Glen who has legions of fans despite his Stupid Evil and Miles Gloriosus tendencies.
• Combat Pragmatist: Shaman and Boy are both known for attacking enemy injuries, attacking unprepared enemies, and using whatever they can get their hands on as a weapon.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Melanie only cares about her TV ratings, even daring Boy to kill her on camera because it'd drive up those ratings. Boy responds by killing her with a TV camera.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: June 27 wears a unique version of the Van Der Koy mooks' uniform which leaves her midriff completely exposed, giving everyone an unobstructed view of her magnificent abs.
• Cycle of Revenge: What the entire story is revealed to be: The Shaman trained the rebels who killed Hilda's husband, so Hilda forced her son (a child at the time) to publicly execute the Shaman's wife and children in the first Culling as revenge. The Shaman escaped and in turn kidnapped Hilda's son and through torture, drugs and Training from Hell turned him into a killing machine to kill his own mother and the rest of the Van Der Koy family as revenge.
• Dark Action Girl: June 27, the Van Der Koys' main enforcer is a formidable hand-to-hand fighter whose skills are on par with Boy's, who is a One-Man Army himself. Which is fitting considering they are brother and sister.
• Deadly Game: Boy finds himself an unwilling contestant on a televised slaughter-fest called The Culling. It is sponsored by cereal companies and their mascots gleefully murder the various participants.
• Defector from Decadence: Gideon reveals to Boy that he's tired of the whole conflict between Hilda and the Shaman, stating he just wants it to end regardless of who wins. As such, he gives Boy a bit of help to escape his execution, in hopes he'll end things.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Darrel is a drugged up enforcer who manages to hold his own against Boy for a while due to Confusion Fu and Major Injury Underreaction.
  • June 27 proves to be Boy's equal and has enough authority to countermand Glen and Gideon.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Unlike the rest of her family, who all seem to hate each other, Hilda genuinely loves her children.
  • June 27 deeply loves her brother, and is willing to kill her mother the moment he shows a sign of remembering her.
• Even Evil Has Standards: June 27 will ruthlessly enforce the will of the Van Der Koy family, but she absolutely draws the line at harming and killing children.
• Evil Mentor: The Shaman, who mutilated and brainwashed Boy in order to make him kill his own mother.
• Evil Old Folks: Grandma Beatrice, the ultimate matriarch of the Van Der Koy family is as nasty as you would expect from someone who raised Hilda, Gideon and Melanie. After Hilda's death she is the one who orders all the remaining troops to kill her grandchildren.
• Exact Words: The Shaman repeatedly tells Boy that he "is the weapon." At first, it seems to mean that Boy shouldn't be reliant on actual weapons and instead focus on training himself. In reality, he's referring to the fact that he's brainwashed Boy into being his weapon against Hilda.
• Face Death with Dignity: Gideon, already dying from being shot in the back by Melanie, casually tells Boy to "do what you gotta do" and doesn't flinch when he's beheaded.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • After Boy starts his mission to kill Hilda, nobody he interacts with in the city seems to realize that he is deaf and most importantly, mute. They all seem to think that he is simply being The Quiet One.
  • Likewise, nobody notices the chef (Boy in disguise) absently grating cheese over nothing as he walks around the mansion.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Basho dramatically introduces Boy to the resistance, only to find the apartment is empty and all that's left is a single man.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Hilda calls off her goons when the protagonist shows her a crayon drawing his sister once made. It turns out she recognizes it because her daughter drew it.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There's a number of clues hinting at the fact that Hilda Van Der Koy is Boy's mother.
    • If Hilda was willing to kill a little girl, why would she only have Boy left a deaf mute? Because she didn't kill Boy's family and the Shaman was the one to deafen him and cut out his tongue.
    • When she sees Boy for the first time, Hilda does a noticeable double take at his appearance.
    • Boy remembers eating Frosty Puffs with his sister, the same cereal company that endorses the Culling, despite his mother's hatred for the Van Der Koy regime.
    • The Shaman made Boy eat small bowls filled with bugs while keeping a whole roasted chicken for himself, due to still hating Boy for killing his family.
  • There are also a number of things foreshadowing the fact that June 27 is Boy's sister:
    • June 27 hardly ever speaks, only communicating through text displays in the visor of her motorcycle helmet paralleling her brother's muteness.
    • When the Van Der Koys become hard pressed for victims for the latest Culling, June 27 is absolutely adamant that no children will be taken or harmed and her orders carry enough weight to countermand Gideon and Glen’s order, which is no surprise given that she’s Hilda’s daughter.
    • June 27 is the only one in the Van Der Koy camp who is the Boy’s equal at hand-to-hand combat.
• Hallucinations: Besides the Mushroom Samba moments, Boy also tends to hallucinate his dead little sister talking to him. While at times, she seems whimsical, overall she seems to be a manifestation of his guilt, such as when he hesitates to kill Gideon who helped him.
• Hero Killer: Melanie is the only villain in the film to inflict actual casualties on the good guys, killing Benny when he Takes the Bullet for Boy and fatally wounding Basho, along with Gideon for his defection from decadence.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • Glen shoots at a woman for insulting him and misses by several feet from maybe twenty feet away.
  • The Van Der Koy's mooks can seemingly hit everything but what they're shooting at, such as one with a minigun being unable to hit Boy or June 27 in a straight hallway with tiny alcoves or several guards firing at Boy with machine guns while he's on an elevated walkway and missing every time.
• Improbable Weapon User: Boy uses anything he can get his hands on as a weapon, including a cheese grater, a necklace, and a fake carrot, though he prefers knives and guns when he can get them.
• Inner Monologue: Boy has one that he took from an arcade fighting game he and his sister played and it allows him to silently respond to the people around him.
• Land of One City: The story takes place in a city-state under the control of the Van der Koy family.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: The Shaman puts Boy through a Training from Hell since childhood in order to turn him into a One-Man Army with a single purpose: To Kill Hilda Van Der Koy. It is eventually revealed that the Shaman did this to avenge his own family and not the Boy's… who were actually the Van Der Koys.
• Late to the Realization: It takes Basho all the way until the climax to note that Boy "doesn't talk much".
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Hilda is Boy's mother.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Due to the drugs he's on, Darrel keeps getting back up to fight Boy. When smacked in the jaw with a hammer, he simply pushes his jaw back in place and takes another puff. Even getting his hand stuck in a vice merely results in him tearing his own arm off to keep fighting. It takes Boy cutting off his leg, thus rendering him physically incapable of getting back up, to keep him down.
• Metaphorgotten: While interrogating Boy, Gideon expounds how the Culling is "Nothing but a wild goose chase" and that it's gone on for so long that "There's no geese left. We're catching pigeons." Unsurprisingly, Boy stares at him in complete confusion.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Gideon is genuinely terrible as The Brute, spending more time focusing on writing rather ridiculous speeches than actually enforcing anything.
• Mood Whiplash: Boy begins bonding with a flower peddler who offers him a free flower, right up until she begins excitedly talking about how much she loves The Culling. He angrily throws her flower back at her and storms off.
• Mundane Luxury: While infiltrating the Van Der Koy mansion, Boy tastes a macaroon and goes wide-eyed at how great they are, promptly wolfing down an entire plate.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: The Shaman is small, slimly built man, but he has no trouble fighting and handing the Boy his ass during training, despite the fact that Boy is well over a foot taller than him, and probably outweighs him two-to-one in muscle.
• Mushroom Samba: The drugs Shaman uses and at times forces on Boy causes him to hallucinate things like Shaman saying things he'd never say or having his eyes float away like bubbles.
• No Name Given: Boy, the Shaman, and June 27 Boy's sister.
• Noodle Incident: What exactly happened to the rest of the resistance, barring the fact they were likely killed, is never answered as it's told from Boy's perspective, who can't understand Benny.
• Offing the Offspring: Hilda decides to kill Boy, her son, after deciding there's nothing left except the weapon the Shaman turned him into.
• The Paranoiac: Hilda, who hasn't left her bunker in years, sees enemies everywhere, and tries to maintain her iron grip on society by any means necessary.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • For years Gideon has taken the precaution of having a group of actors pretend to be the Van Der Koys during the annual pre-Culling family dinner at the Mansion on the assumption that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to assassinate Hilda and/or or the whole family during this time when they were exposed. He turns out to be completely justified.
  • Hilda has continued with the Culling even decades after every trace of resistance and opposition to the Van Der Koy regime in the city has been completely eradicated, to the point that Gideon and Glen have trouble even finding a dozen people every year to put a good show, a state of affairs that Gideon attributes to the fact that the Shaman remains at large and Hilda is convinced he is coming for her. As the audience knows from the very start of the film, she is completely right.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Melanie and Glen both use this colour scheme liberally.
• The Reveal: The Shaman kidnapped, mutilated, and brainwashed boy into believing Hilda killed his family. In reality, Hilda is Boy's mother and June 27 is his sister.
• Rule of Three: Twice during Boy's fight against Darrel, a drugged up guard with "a lot of problems".
  • Darrel gets back up three times after Boy thought he'd beaten him. First from a normal beating, then from hitting him in the jaw with a hammer, and finally from getting his arm stuck in a vice.
  • Boy declares himself the winner only to pull an Inner Monologue Equivalent of a Verbal Backspace each time Darrel gets back up.
• Running Gag: Boy has no idea what Benny, one of the resistance, is saying (due to his bushy beard) and keeps hearing random words which he then imagines as he tries to make sense of them, such as him and Basho cutting off a farmer's foot.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Boy is amazing at parkour and combat, but completely helpless at planning, socializing, or even showing emotion.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: When Boy, Basho and Benny spoil Melanie's winter wonderland Culling show and deplete her Mooks, she wades in herself with an Armsel Striker and applies More Dakka to compensate for her lack of melee combat ability. Unfortunately for the fledgling Resistance, it's quite effective.
• Slave to PR: Melanie is a shrewd businesswoman and PR whizz who arranges the regime's Bread and Circuses (complete with Product Placement) and doesn't care about anyone or anything except the TV ratings that her events get. This is mostly how the Van Der Koys get to keep being Villains With Good Publicity despite being so Obviously Evil.
• Stupid Evil: Glen decides to shoot a woman for insulting him. When he misses and kills a random man instead, he thinks he can calm the ensuing riot by saying "he's sorry." Eventually, Gideon just orders everyone present killed rather than let Glen continue to mess things up.
• Training from Hell: The Shaman's training for Boy involves being Buried Alive, rolling a giant stone head up a hill, and knife fighting while tied to the Shaman, among other things.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Boy seems to completely ruin Basho's and Benny's plan because he can't understand the latter's explanation. In the climax, it's revealed he followed their plan perfectly: Create a distraction so they can sneak in and replace the guards then follow him to where Hilda is actually being kept.
• Verbal Backspace: Boy has a few Inner Monologue equivalents.
  • After getting Darrel stuck in Boy, declares his victory, only for Darrel to prove him wrong.
  Boy: Player one wins!
  (Darrel rips off his own arm)
  Boy: Player two is fucking crazy!
  • When Benny is telling Basho something that Boy thinks sounds like "Dodon buns", Boy thinks they sound fun. Then Basho starts sobbing and he quickly corrects himself that clearly they aren't fun.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: There is no clue whatsoever as to where the unnamed city-state where the story takes place is located. It is clearly a tropical place, but other than that, there's nothing about the culture or architecture that could help pin it down, the ethnic composition of the population is all over the place and the fact that everyone is speaking and writing in English could very well be just Translation Convention. Word of God calling the setting "post-apocalyptic" doesn't matters either.
• Word-Salad Humor: Because of his bushy beard, Boy can't read Benny's lips accurately, resulting in a Running Gag of him just "hearing" random words that make no sense.
• Would Harm a Child: The Shaman has no problem brutally beating Boy during his training. Then it's revealed he almost murdered him years prior for killing his family.

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