Boy Kills World – TIFF 2023

A deaf and mute boy is trained for vengeance against a murderous family in Boy Kills World. The world has become a dystopian wasteland thanks to the yearly culling put on by Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) and her family, including sister Melanie Van Der Koy (Michelle Dockery) and her husband Gideon (Sharlto Copley), brother Glen Van Der Koy (Brett Gelman), and head of security June 27 (Jessica Rothe). An orphaned Boy (Bill Skarsgård) is saved by a Shaman (Yayan Ruhian) and trained for the singular objective of killing Hilda Van Der Koy for the death of his mother.

Boy Kills World Synopsis

Boy Kills World is the debut feature film by German director Moritz Mohr, produced by Sam Raimi. The film is a dystopian action-comedy starring Bill Skarsgård (IT, Barbarian) as the titular Boy, who despite being deaf and mute, still communicates with himself through inner monologue and regularly interacts with a vision of his dead sister Mina (Quinn Copeland). The Boy joins forces with resistance fighters Basho (Andrew Koji) and Benny (Isaiah Mustafa) to infiltrate the Van Der Koy family headquarters and put an end to their televised execution event known as The Culling.

My Thoughts on Boy Kills World

While arguably a bit tonally inconsistent with its mix of tongue-in-cheek humour and extremely graphic violence, Boy Kills World ends up being an incredibly entertaining film. This is predominantly thanks to the lead performance by an incredibly ripped Bill Skarsgård as the very naive hero, who somewhat finds himself in over his head as he sets out to achieve his singular objective. Altogether, Boy Kills World is a gory good time.