To some, he’ll always be Pennywise, the eternal sewer-dwelling clown of your nightmares. To others, he’s the hapless, unlucky Air Bnb occupant in Barbarian or the ambitious, sniveling Marquis in the John Wick-iverse. And to still others, he’s the kid who followed his dad Stellan and his older brother Alexander into the family business, carving out a nice niche playing weirdos, monsters and assorted oddballs. Soon, people will think of Bill Skarsgård as the Next Action-Movie Savior, with the 33-year-old Swedish actor stepping into the lead role in The Crow and bravely attempting to outrun the shadow of Brandon Lee. (Should you wonder whether he’s given up characters destined to haunt the collective consciousness, don’t worry: Skarsgård is also playing the feral vampire in Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’ remake of the 1922 German silent.)
Tall, ripped, and possessing the deft physical presence of the world’s most dangerous mime, the actor does a trial run for action stardom with Boy Kills World, which isn’t a movie so much as a 12-year-old boy’s mindset brought to life. Long story short: A deaf-mute kid living in an authoritarian dystopia witnesses his mother being gunned down. He trains with a mystical martial-arts master in the forest, grows up to be Bill Skarsgård, and vows to take revenge on elites responsible for her murder.
There are guns and knives and punches and kicks and guts and gore. A massacre happens during the broadcast of a kids’ TV show that’s used as a display of governmental propaganda. One character has a motorcycle helmet that flashes messages in LED lights on their visor. Another yells a lot and is, regrettably, played by Brett Gelman. You’re convinced it’s based off a video game, but no; it’s just inspired folks to make both an actual video game and an animated series based on a video game within the movie. There are plenty of obstacles that Skarsgård’s hero, known only as Boy, must overcome. That’s nothing compared to the obstacles that Skarsgård himself has thrown in his path by filmmakers who are way, way more concerned with “cool,” gleefully provocative shock-and-awe moments — perfect for that must-have red-band trailer! — then things like quality control.
In other words, it’s the type of genre movie that give genre movies a bad name, and you can feel how flop-sweat desperate director Moritz Mohr, his cowriters Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers, and a host of other folks involved are to make this an instant cult movie. Which, when you break Boy Kills World down to its raw-material elements, suggests it should have aced that test easily enough. It’s cast includes Happy Death Day‘s Jessica Rothe, The Raid movies’ MVP Yayan Ruhian, Famke Janssen, and a delightfully demented Michelle Dockery. (We love Michelle Dockery! Go Lady Mary!) The voice inside Boy’s head comes courtesy of comedian Jon Benjamin, which purposefully blurs the line between revenge-flick mayhem and a sort of Adult Swim parody of revenge-flick mayhem. (We love Adult Swim and Jon Benjamin!) It has the sort of mixed-martial arts fight sequences and gun-fu showdowns that have become standard operating protocol for elaborately choreographed screen violence. (We love elaborately choreographed screen violence!)
And yet: there’s something inherently lazy about this mash-up of pitch-black comedy, pulpy violence, and sci-fi–dystopia spare parts that cancels all the hard labor it took to make this try-hard with a vengeance. Even the film’s big twist — without spoiling the particulars, it’s the sort of thing that’s meant to lace sharper class-warfare commentary into the movie’s broader satirical swipes — feels handed down from Cliché Mountain. There actually is an art form to making exploitation cinema, a recipe to follow when you’re proportioning out the outrageous with the sly and the mondo bloody and berserk with the button-pushing. This is just a bunch of shit thrown into a pot over a 1,000-degree open flame, and liberally spiced with famous people firing big guns. Thanks, but no.
All the more reason, then, to circle back to Bill Skarsgård. If he isn’t quite the saving grace of Boy Kills World that you want him to be, he’s definitely the most compelling reason to see it. Watching the long-limbed actor pummel and slide his way through a lot of hand-to-hand, foot-to-torso and fist-to-face combat — notably in an extended bout with Ruhian, a sequence that suggests a more kinetic, disciplined film lurking beneath the sniggering, adolescent brouhaha — you at least feel like he’s got the goods regarding a potential Crow franchise. Considering that Boy never speaks, and that Skarsgård has to convey everything through his face and posture while also contending with an annoying video-game-announcer voiceover, the degree of difficulty is upped substantially. The movie starts off as yet another Kill Bill, et al. clone. Thanks to its star, it at least goes out as something closer to Kill, Bill, Kill!
