When a movie that plays at a film festival gets purchased by a distributor, there’s always a chance it gets changed before its wide release, which is the case with TIFF 2023’s Boy Kills World. Sometimes, the change can be as minor as its title, like the Michael B. Jordan drama Fruitvale Station being simply Fruitvale at its Sundance debut. Other times are a bit more substantial like The Raid getting an entirely new musical score after its TIFF premiere. In the case of Boy Kills World, the film features a last-minute major casting addition, one that unfortunately makes an already irritating movie somehow worse.
While the movie is largely the same as in the TIFF version—you can find our TIFF 2023 Boy Kills World review here. The titular Boy (Bill Skarsgård) is waging a one-man war on the Van De Koy family for seemingly killing his family and rendering him deaf-mute — the main change comes from Boy’s internal monologue. Whereas in the TIFF 2023 version, Skarsgård provided his own voiceover, the wide release has changed it to voice actor H. Jon Benjamin, with the narrative framing being the Boy taking a voice from a fighting game announcer he used to love as a kid.
Normally, I’m a huge fan of Benjamin’s dry delivery. However, this recast just highlights how awful the comedic writing in co-writers Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers’ screenplay is. It takes the worst elements of hyperactive, Deadpool-inspired randomness disguised as absurdity and turns it up to an 11. I was able to deal with it easier the first time on the basis that Skarsgård’s delivery wasn’t as annoying as the rest of the cast; Benjamin got dragged down to their level.
“Just like last time, however, Boy Kills World’s sole saving grace is entirely due to the numerous fight scenes, courtesy of action director/fight coordinator Dawid Szatarski.”
If the voice behind Archer and Bob’s Burgers isn’t able to make a single line of dialogue funny, there’s a major problem at hand. The only ones who get away less scathed than the rest are Andrew Koji as twitchy revolutionary Basho and Sharlto Copley as smug public figurehead Glen Van De Koy, the latter I surprisingly didn’t mind as much this time.
Benjamin’s voiceover also showcases how tonally disjointed the movie feels in its third act when the movie wants to get serious and major plot details are revealed, but the goofy quips still never end.
Just like last time, however, Boy Kills World’s sole saving grace is entirely due to the numerous fight scenes, courtesy of action director/fight coordinator Dawid Szatarski. Even if there are a few moments where it is hard to tell what is happening due to some sweeping drone shots, the choreography and brutal violence on display here are impressively thrilling, especially the final fight itself.
I really want to like Boy Kills World more than I do, but I found myself spending most of the movie wishing everyone was on mute like the protagonist. It’s almost better to wait for the eventual compilation of action scenes from Boy Kills World that someone will probably compile on social media later down the line.
