Old-School Revenge Thriller Shows Just How Tough Bill Skarsgard Is

In the heyday of the FX animated hit Archer, rumors of a live-action film swirled, and many fans wondered who would play the dashing assassin. Unsurprisingly, Jon Hamm was a natural fit to play the role. But, H. Jon Benjamin’s voice as Archer was so iconic it was later reported that Benjamin would be dubbing Hamm’s lines. Though that project remains in Hollywood limbo, the concept lives on in Moritz Mohr’s Boy Kills World. Bill Skarsgård plays a deaf-mute whose inner voice is voiced by Benjamin, and it works to perfection, resulting in a film that’s a balls-to-the-wall fight spectacular.

Boy Kills World is an action thriller film by director Moritz Mohr, released in 2024. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, a young man simply known as “Boy” lives through terrible trauma after his family is killed by a woman named Hilda Van Der Koy, who currently rules the land. Now older and more bloodthirsty than ever, Boy heads into the fray to claim revenge while liberating the world from her tyrannical grasp.

Pros

• Bill Skarsgård and H. Jon Benjamin make a great pair
• The action is exceptional and exciting
• The fight choreography is great

Cons

• The film leans into stereotypes

Boy (Skarsgård) sees his sister Mina (Quinn Copeland) die at the hands of evil dictator Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen). Once a year, Van Der Koy gathers her enemies for a brutal public execution known as “The Culling.” Boy escapes to the woods and learns to fight from the mysterious Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). Though visions of his dead sister cloud his mind and ultimately his judgment, his goal remains the same for years: Kill Hilda Van Der Koy. When the opportunity arises, he’s joined by Beanie (Isaiah Mustafa) and Basho (Andrew Koji) on a hallucinogenic killing spree.

Boy Kills World Has Exciting Fight Sequences

Boy Kills World holds nothing back when it comes to action. There are cheese grater kills, flips upon flips, and exquisite kicks and punches to back it all up. Due to the subject matter, the film is free from reductive John Wick comparisons and is far closer to an old-fashioned Kung fu movie in terms of plot and fight influence. Make no mistake, there are plenty of guns in Boy Kills World, but by no means are they the film’s preferred weapon of choice.

Having a co-star from The Raid franchise will do wonders for the believability of your film and combining that essence with thoughtful camera work is usually a recipe for success. Fights in Boy Kills World include quick shots, but the film — written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers — is not afraid of long takes. The camera, on the other hand, is whipping around constantly.

The action gets every angle in every way, and the film’s climactic action sequence takes place on a TV set, which makes it all the more thrilling. The sheer amount of camera activity is a marvel. The camera work starts off static, tracking the arms and legs of those fighting, before it turns into a drone that flies through the entire set, landing on a real piece of camera equipment that is used to kill the last enemy.

Boy Kills World Leans Too Heavily Into Stereotypes

Skarsgård spends an inordinate amount of time with Ruhian. Boy being deaf and mute makes it less disorienting when we do not hear Ruhian speak in complete sentences. Their dynamic, however, is yet another in a long line of stereotypical relationships in film, one that is exacerbated by the actor of color barely speaking. It should be said that Boy Kills World leans heavily on an Asian character teaching a white man the art of fighting through mysticism. By the film’s end, that very idea is being explored, though barely. To say the issue is handled deftly would be an overstatement.

These days, even when a movie is announced, fan reaction can feel overwhelming. Boy Kills World premiered at 2023’s Toronto International Film Festival to a warm reception. However, a high-octane Kung fu flick starring Bill Skarsgård can be compared to The Crow, a film with far more anticipation and, to be fair, nostalgia. But that lack of buzz is sure to clear the path for Boy Kills World to become a cult classic. Skarsgård and Benjamin make for an odd pair that work well together at every turn. The vision of Mohr is clear and realized, and the resulting work of art will excite audiences around the world.