The director of Bill Skarsgard’s bonkers-looking action film Boy Kills World, Moritz Mohr, recently opened up about his influences for the movie. The film sees Skarsgård play a deaf man named Boy who has been trained to become an elite assassin after his family is murdered. He then finds himself on a mission of revenge.
While talking about what inspired the movie with Total Film, the filmmaker said: “We talked a lot about what we loved. I love old kung-fu movies. I love Asian cinema. I play a lot of video games and I read a lot of manga. Anime is a big influence. But also shitty little Saturday-morning cartoons that I loved growing up. I knew I wanted to make a revenge movie with a deaf protagonist, but that was literally the one constant.”
Mohr went on to say that he was originally looking to cast someone younger to star in the film, before casting Skarsgård: “He’s almost two meters tall, and that’s not very boyish. But at the same time, he’s literally perfect for this. He has this childlike innocence. And he can fight.”
It looks like Skarsgård delivers a badass performance in the movie. He’s joined in the film by Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Yayan Ruhian, with Andrew Koji, Sharlto Copley and Famke Janssen.
Skarsgård stars as Boy, “who vows revenge after his family is murdered by Hilda Van Der Koy (Janssen), the deranged matriarch of a corrupt post-apocalyptic dynasty that left the boy orphaned, deaf and voiceless. Driven by his inner voice, one which he co-opted from his favorite childhood video game, Boy trains with a mysterious shaman (Ruhian) to become an instrument of death and is set loose on the eve of the annual culling of dissidents. Bedlam ensues as Boy commits bloody martial arts mayhem, inciting a wrath of carnage and blood-letting. As he tries to get his bearings in this delirious realm, Boy soon falls in with a desperate resistance group, all the while bickering with the apparent ghost of his rebellious little sister.”
Boy Kills World drops in theaters on April 26th, 2024!
