Boy Kills World
Several enemies of the state are murdered on live TV in a pivotal scene from “Boy Kills World,” a hyper-action movie about a media-addicted killer who wants to avenge his family’s deaths. We don’t know who these TV casualties are or what people think of their deaths, but we do know that their killers are Frosty Puffs cereal mascots. This should be a spoiler, but it’s not.
Frosty Puffs are proud sponsors of The Culling, an annually televised flex of power organized by the insecure fascist Melanie Van Der Koy (Michelle Dockery) and her family. Frosty Puffs also plays a crucial role in the over-exaggerated and under-developed backstory of the titular Boy (Bill Skarsgård), a deaf and mute orphan who fondly remembers eating sugary breakfast cereal when he was a happy child, before the Van Der Koys murdered his family.
“Boy Kills World” is a generic programmer about one more lonely mixed media junkie who wants to murder the demagogues that he blames for ruining his life. Skarsgård’s character eventually feels conflicted about his murder-quest, as he tells us through overbearingly goofy voiceover narration (H. John Benjamin). But he doesn’t seem to care that his beloved Frosty Puffs have partnered with the Van Der Koys. And in a later scene, Boy also enjoys a bowl of Frosty Puffs. Something doesn’t add up here.
“Boy Kills World” dabbles at media criticism by fixating on the Van Der Koy family’s manipulation of the media. This only means so much in a gory and joyless action comedy that imagines media consumers and political dissidents as unmemorable extras. We know what Skarsgård’s avenging hero wants because his stream-of-conscious narration never stops telling us everything he’s thinking or feeling.
We can also tell some things about the righteous nature of the Boy’s mission based on generic training montage sequences starring “The Raid” star Yayan Ruhian. Ruhian plays an eccentric bog hermit who knows how to fight and also takes hallucinogens. The Boy is also haunted by visions of his dead sister (Quinn Copeland), and she talks, too.
The Van Der Koys are also fairly obvious: Melanie is vain and she thinks televised executions are good for her TV ratings; her husband Glen (Sharlto Copley) is a temperamental buffoon who supposedly is (or was?) popular with his wife’s supporters; and Glen’s brother-in-law Gideon (Brett Gelman) is a frustrated artist, pouring his heart into pompous speeches and scripts for his uncaring family’s public demonstrations. In another key scene, Melanie literally projects her insecurities onto the Boy because he can’t communicate verbally. Which is weird, because he still speaks a language that she’s fluent in—over-the-top violence.
