In the metropolis that she has led for 25 years, Hilda Van der Koy prides herself on having eliminated crime. In fact, every year, bandits chosen by his team are executed live during a major television show. In reality, these are innocent citizens. Boy’s mother and sister are among the victims of the cruel dictator. A refugee since childhood in the surrounding jungle, Boy follows the Shaman’s training, until the day he returns to civilization to give free rein to his terrible wrath. In the bloody and assumed absurdity Boy Kills World (Boy VS the world), the protagonist is like Mowgli on steroids… and acid.
Unveiled last year at the Toronto International Film Festival in the section Midnight Madness, this completely crazy action film is based on a short film imagined by Moritz Mohr, Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers. Impressed by the thing, Sam Raimi, big man behind evil Dead (The Opera of Terror), Spiderman (2002) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), decided to produce the long version that Mohr directed from a screenplay by his two companions.
The result is akin to a cross between a host of heterogeneous influences: films like Hunger Games And The Purge (The purge), The raid, redemption (Serbian maut), Japanese anime, through fighting video games like Street Fighter (Boy looks a lot like the character Ken Masters).
Regarding the said fights, they are numerous and so outrageous that they become comical: that is the goal. In this regard, Mohr strives to offer confrontations that are different from each other, and to film these in an always hyperdynamic manner. Here, “excess” is the key word.
The trouble is that between these lively choreographies, the film becomes very talkative and then struggles to interest.
Singular rework
On the other hand, the interpreters obviously have a lot of funincluding the “villains” Famke Janssen (saga X-Men), as an authoritarian despot, and Michelle Dockery, miles from Downton Abbey as a director of “entertainment” devoid of conscience. In the role of the Shaman, a character full of surprises, Yayan Ruhian (The raidprecisely) also stands out.
As for the deaf-mute hero played by Bill Skarsgârd (killer clown in It / That) all muscles and intensity, the film makes it an almost mystical presence; a kind of silent exterminating angel. That being said, we know what the character is thinking thanks to his inner voice (and the discussions he has with his late little sister, whom he continues to see).
The proposal is certainly original in its singular re-mixing of disparate narrative and visual referents. On a narrative level, the developments turn out to be a little too often approximate and arbitrary. Visually speaking, however, it’s breathtaking.