Film / Boy Kills World

"Insert crazy action montage!"

Boy Kills World is a 2024 action comedy thriller film directed by newcomer Moritz Mohr and written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers. It stars Bill Skarsgård, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Sharlto Copley, Andrew Koji, and Famke Janssen, with H. Jon Benjamin serving as the film's narrator.

When an attack by an evil tyrant (Janssen) renders him deaf, mute, and orphaned, young man (Skarsgård) sets out on a years-long revenge plan to gain a sweet inner voice (Benjamin), train himself up, and take revenge on the tyrant with the help of an unlikely team. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9th, 2023 and was released in theaters on April 26th, 2024.

Previews: Trailer; Red Band trailer

---

Boy Kills World includes examples of the following:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Hilda forced Boy, her own son, to execute the Shaman's family when Boy was just a child. Even after Boy rediscovers his old identity after he returns years later, Hilda still doesn't hesitate to tearfully order his death, reasoning that he's just the Shaman's weapon now.
  • The Shaman himself is also a twisted example, as the Training Montage shows Boy had come to think of him as a Parental Substitute, due to him being the only meaningful human connection in the jungle wilderness and his deaf-muteness hampering his ability to directly communicate with others when scavenging in the city. However, The Shaman invoked this, deliberately causing Boy's disabilities to isolate him and then warping his mind through psychoactive drugs and repeated brainwashing to distort his memories, leaving himself the only one Boy could rely on. During their climatic fight, it's implied The Shaman was counting on Boy's attachment to him as a weakness for when he inevitably turned on him.
• Acting Unnatural: While pretending to be a chef in Hilda's mansion, Boy's told to act like a chef by his hallucinated sister. He does so by absently grating cheese as he walks around the place.
• Actually a Doombot: Boy seems to kill Hilda rather early, only to learn he killed an actress.
• Advertising by Association: The trailer boasts the involvement of producers Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Don't Breathe, The Grudge) and Roy Lee (It, Barbarian).
• All There in the Script: The grandmother of the Van Der Koy family is never referred to onscreen as anything other than "Gram Gram", but the credits reveal that her name is Beatrice Van Der Koy.
• Ammo-Using Melee Weapon: One of the most distinctive weapons La Résistance give to Boy is a set of brass knuckles with a short barrel and pistol magazine attached, which is fired by punching.
• An Arm and a Leg: Dave, whom Basho says has "a lot of issues", tears off his own arm after Boy gets his hand stuck in a vice.
  Boy: Player Two is fucking crazy!
• Armour Is Useless: Played With throughout the film.
  • Boy has zero defensive armour on him, but the Van Der Koy mooks he fights through can barely hit him thanks to his acrobatic speed and their absolutely crap aim. Nonetheless, he does still get the utter shit hammered out of him throughout the course of the film, which would have been alleviated by wearing some kind of defensive gear, but Boy is notably pressured more by the goons wielding close-range weapons than any guns. Ditto for June 27, who has a Custom Uniform of Sexy that gives unobstructed access to her midriff, yet even when faced in a hallway full of gun-wielding enemies, none of them so much as graze her with a bullet. However, The Shaman has an easy time incapacitating her with an improvised shiv made out of her broken visor in part thanks to her lack of armour.
  • The Van Der Koy Mooks all wear uniforms that are presumably covered in bulletproof armour, and wear face-obscuring headgear for the most part, yet both are easily punctured by gunshots whenever Boy grabs a firearm. However, said armour does work...whenever Boy grabs one of them to use as a Bulletproof Human Shield, blocking bullets from reaching Boy, but utterly failing to stop any of them from penetrating their corpse in the first place. During their escape from Hilda's bunker, Boy and June 27 are accosted by a Giant Mook wearing hi-tech plate armour, which is actually bulletproof, pushing them both back from his gradual advance. However, when he gets close enough, the duo are able to overpower him and use him as another shield against a minigun-wielding mook, whose barrage of high-powered bullets evidently penetrates through even his durable armour eventually, but not before the sibling duo get into range to take him down.
  • Benny and Basho don't wear any kind of bulletproof armour when engaging in a shootout with the Van Der Koy forces during their Big Damn Heroes rescue of Boy from The Culling, cutting through swathes of enemies despite one of them wearing a stage costume and the other only a tank top, despite both having stocked up at the armoury prior to their rescue. It costs both of them, as Melanie mortally wounds them with blasts from her shotgun, though Basho is able to last a little longer thanks to the location of his injury.
  • The Shaman is characterised by his humble and ragged attire, wearing little more than rags even when fighting Boy and June 27 2-on-1. He is fairly hardy for an old man, at one point battering open June's helmet with his own head, but his lack of defensive gear plays into his defeat, once Boy turns his fanged necklace into an improvised shiv against him, Despite the "blade" being only about half a finger long, it's enough for Boy and The Shaman to slice each other to pieces with since neither of them have anything to block with but their own bodies, and The Shaman ultimately dies from a Slashed Throat thanks to this.
• Bait-and-Switch: Melanie is furious with Boy for killing her husband... because he's the host for The Culling which is airing in a couple hours, and she spent years making sure he was a good host...
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Anna the Flower Girl gushes to Boy about how much she loves the Culling and how excited she is to see it. She ends up being one of its victims when the Van Der Koys find themselves short of actual guilty people to kill on camera.
  • While doing a Walk and Talk to the TV studio for The Culling, Melanie tells an underling that because they don't have Glen for colour commentary, she wants a camera "right in the splatter zone, if that lens isn't covered in blood you're doing it wrong". The lens of one camera does indeed get covered in blood when Boy uses it to splatter Melanie herself.
• Being Evil Sucks: Gideon is so sick and tired of the Culling (and by extension, the rest of the family and their sins) that he's willing to help Boy just so that, one way or another, there might finally be an end to it. He doesn't even seem to mind when it becomes clear that Boy is about to kill him despite the help he provided, instead just telling him, "Do whatever you have to do."
• Big Bad: Hilda Van Der Koy, the matriarch of a powerful, corrupt post-apocalyptic dynasty who is responsible for the murder of Boy's family. However, whilst she is undoubtedly a bad person worthy of the position, the reveal that The Shaman is actually an Evil Mentor who psychologically tortured and manipulated Boy into a Tyke Bomb to have him kill his own family as ironic vengeance for the Shaman's own loss makes the two serve as a Big Bad Ensemble.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Van Der Koys, consisting of a paranoid dictator, a psychopathic PR representative, her bumbling and cruel husband, a morally exhausted scriptwriter and enforcer, their grandma who nobody cares about, the dictator's daughter taking out her pain and anger on their subjects, and a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb unwittingly seeking vengeance upon them all. Furthermore, said dictator is also paranoid and delusional... like mother, like son.
  Boy: This family needs therapy.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Dave appears to be nothing more than a random Mook, but gives Boy an absolutely brutal fight in the warehouse.
• Bread and Circuses: The tradition of a yearly Culling of 'dissidents' was started by Hilda when the Van Der Koys first took power. In the years since, Melanie has added to the formula by making it a Rigged Spectacle Fight with Mascot Mooks and Product Placement.
  Melanie: They’re all going to watch and cheer as you die.
• Bumbling Henchman Duo: An early scene features Glen and Gideon reporting to Melanie after they accidentally trigger a massacre and as a result fail to gather the full 12 victims for the impending Culling ceremony. It’s clear from Melanie’s reaction that this kind of ineptitude isn’t entirely out of character from them.
• Children Forced to Kill: When his memories return, Boy realizes Hilda forced him to shoot the Shaman's family.
• Closest Thing We Got: As Gideon complains to Boy at one point, the Van Der Koys have long since won the war and crushed all opposition, so the political enemies and dissidents who are the actual intended targets of the Culling simply don't exists any more, and they're having to make due with whatever they can scrape off the streets on Culling day, and even that is getting hard.
• Co-Dragons: Melanie, Gideon, and Glen, the first two being Hilda's siblings and the third being her brother-in-law, are her primary underlings.
  • Melanie is The Evil Genius and The Heavy who generally gives the orders, does most of the actual work of keeping the Van Der Koys in power and is the most prominent villain for much of the film since Hilda has become an erratic recluse.
  • Gideon is supposed to be The Brute as far as Melanie and Glen are concerned, but they allow him to write the regime's speeches to stop him complaining. He invariably produces overwrought nonsense that falls heavily into Non Sequitur and True Art Is Incomprehensible.
  • Glen is Melanie's Henpecked Husband and the Smarmy Host of her crowd-pleasingly bloodthirsty Culling events. Melanie's media wizardry maintains the entire family as Villains With Good Publicity, but none more so than Glen who has legions of fans despite his Stupid Evil and Miles Gloriosus tendencies.
• Combat Pragmatist: Shaman and Boy are both known for attacking enemy injuries, attacking unprepared enemies, and using whatever they can get their hands on as a weapon.
• Cool Helmet: June 27 rocks a stylish motorcycle helmet that can display electronic messages on the visor.
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits see done in comic book style, not only showing the various characters as the names of the actors playing them appear onscreen, but also depicting a mini story of Boy and June 27 fighting their way through many mooks together.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Melanie has controlled the media narrative and subjugated the populace with her TV broadcasts for years, so Boy dispatches her by zooming the Culling’s livestream camera into her head and impaling her through the face or throat with its support rods. This is shown from the camera’s POV and the lens cracks on impact so we only see a distorted Gross-Up Close-Up of Melanie’s bloodied face and her eyes rolling up into her head as her last breaths rattle. To put the capper on it, the camera boom lifts Melanie into the air and as Boy walks away her body slides off the rods and crashes to the ground along with the chair she’s tied to. As Melanie manages the impressive feat of being the worst human being even in her horrible family, it’s hard to feel sorry for her.
• Cryptic Background Reference: The movie makes reference to the fact that 25 years ago Hilda and her family took control of the City and instituted the Cullings, but who her revolution was directed against and how it was carried out is never elaborated upon, beyond the fact that eventually Melanie got the Frosty Puffs cereal company to pay the costs.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: June 27 wears a unique version of the Van Der Koy mooks' uniform which leaves her midriff completely exposed, giving everyone an unobstructed view of her magnificent abs.
• Cycle of Revenge: What the entire story is revealed to be: The Shaman trained the rebels who killed Hilda's husband, so Hilda forced her son (a child at the time) to publicly execute the Shaman's wife and children in the first Culling as revenge. The Shaman escaped and in turn kidnapped Hilda's son and through torture, drugs and Training from Hell turned him into a killing machine to kill his own mother and the rest of the Van Der Koy family as revenge.
• Dark Action Girl: June 27, the Van Der Koys' main enforcer is a formidable hand-to-hand fighter whose skills are on par with Boy's, who is a One-Man Army himself. Which is fitting considering they are brother and sister.
• Deadly Game: Boy finds himself an unwilling contestant on a televised slaughter-fest called The Culling. It is sponsored by cereal companies and their mascots gleefully murder the various participants.
• Death by Irony: Every major character gets one of these, starting from the fact that most of the kills are being done unknowingly between the same family members as per The Shaman's intention.
  • Glenn is the Smarmy Host and The Face of the Van Der Koy regime, being the one the public most recognises form his hosting of the televised Culling event. He dies from Basho accidentally dropping a bench press onto his head, bursting it like a watermelon and leaving him an unrecognisable mess that's definitely unfit for camera.
  • Gideon is the scriptwriter for the Van Der Koys and firmly believes the pen is mightier than the sword as a result. He dies from Boy killing him with a literal sword. Additionally, he metaphorically stabbed his family in the back by freeing Boy so he could stop the Culling games for good, and gets mortally wounded by Melanie shooting him In the Back. Gideon also showcased himself to be fairly Genre Savvy, able to lure Boy into a trap through a faked dinner scene between the Van Der Koys (actually actors), and by the end of it he lampshades to Boy how narratively unsatisfying his "confrontation" is with him, even speaking about it in video-game terms like Boy does.
  • Melanie is the director of the Culling Games and is obsessed with the show and the high ratings it brings, despite her role keeping her off-camera. She dies literally on/by camera, with Boy even going out of his way to ensure she gets a Karmic Death from it.
  • Hilda is the leader of the Van Der Koys and in flashback is shown to have been grooming Boy to become her eventual enforcer down the line, starting by teaching him how to shoot a gun before forcing him to put it into practice against The Shaman's family as Revenge for his actions leading to her husband's death. The Shaman usurped her idea after the traumatised Boy ran away into the jungle, spending years psychologically brainwashing and torturing him into becoming a killing machine who'd then go on to destroy his own family as payback. When the truth is revealed, Hilda considers Boy too far gone to be saved anymore, and orders June 27: aka Boy's younger sister Mina, whom she'd switched her efforts to after his disappearance, to kill him. Instead, Mina buries her hatchet in Hilda's head, causing her demise by the child she'd raised into a killing machine instead.
  • Finally, The Shaman meets his end at Boy's hands after a long and gruelling fight against the very Weapon he'd created, after he proves himself too far consumed with revenge to let his grudge with the Van Der Koy family go, despite having achieved everything he'd have wanted out of it. This is after Boy, who'd have several reasons to want payback on him for the abuse and brainwashing he put him through, was willing to walk away from the fight after reconnecting with his sister. Additionally, The Shaman was characterised by his lack of extravagant clothing throughout the years he spent with Boy, save for his animal-fang necklace. That same necklace gets turned into a weapon between the two during their fight, ultimately impaling The Shaman in the throat with the one item of material value he possessed.
  • Gram Gram Van Der Koy is the oldest and least important member of the family, such that she's actually present at the faked dinner scene with the other decoy actors despite the risk she could get killed, highlighting how unimportant she is to the regime. She's (maybe) Killed Offscreen by The Shaman in the background of Boy and June 27's escape attempt out of the bunker, after ordering the deaths of the youngest (and only remaining viable heirs) of the family, but it's never clarified by the end of the film, being literally too unimportant to the climactic confrontation to be addressed.
• Defector from Decadence: Gideon reveals to Boy that he's tired of the whole conflict between Hilda and the Shaman, stating he just wants it to end regardless of who wins. As such, he gives Boy a bit of help to escape his execution, in hopes he'll end things.
• Defiant to the End: Once beaten and restrained, Melanie mocks Boy by telling him his antics have only improved her ratings, and dares him to kill her on camera and make her a martyr, even spitting blood onto him and calling him a coward when he appears to walk away. Her resolve gives way to panic when she realises how he’s going to kill her, but she doesn't get to be frightened for long.
• Determinator:
  • Dave, the Elite Mook who Boy confronts, is a drugged-out crazy version of this, initially seeming to be just a tougher Mook before it's revealed that he repeatedly huffs some sort of aerosol pain-numbing drug to keep going, his fighting style going from decent to wildly flailing around at Boy in a hyper craze of maniac ferocity, no matter what damage he inflicts on him. Boy stabs him in the shoulder with a knife and throws him aside into a container, he gets back up. Boy shoots him in the foot and beats him around the face and throat with a radio, he gets back up. Boy breaks his jaw with a hammer, he just pops it back into place. Boy crushes his hand in a hydraulic vice, he rips the whole thing off. Boy ultimately has to resort to slicing his leg off so his impaired mobility will keep him down long enough to bleed out from his excessive injuries.
  • Boy spends the movie getting the absolute 7 hells beaten out of him in both flashback to his Training from Hell and the entirety of his raid against the Van Der Koy forces over the course of a single afternoon. He's beaten, slashed, stabbed, thrown around and absolutely covered in blood towards the end, but never gives up his drive for revenge against his tormentors.
  • The Shaman turns out to be an even bigger one. He apparently led resistance efforts against the Van Der Koys in the past and trained soldiers to fight against them, even killing Boy's real father through his efforts, and despite the loss of his entire family and being forced into hiding, he never gave up his own desire for revenge either, spending years psychologically torturing and moulding Boy into his weapon of ironic payback on the family. Hilda is deeply aware of this, and that as long as he's alive, her life will always be in danger no matter how many soldiers or defences she has. It seems to the rest of the family to just be mere excessive paranoia, but the ending of the film proves she had the Shaman's measure utterly correct, even down to the fact he'd infiltrated the Culling. However, the True Final Boss fight against the Shaman becomes instigated when he proves too determined to take absolute revenge for his loss, demanding June 27's death as well even after Hilda's passing to wipe the whole family out. When he and Boy come to blows over the issue, it's an immensely painful and bloody struggle between two men who won't quit no matter how badly they're hurt.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The whole film builds up to Boy killing Hilda, but then it's revealed she is his true mother and June 27 unceremoniously dispatches her with several minutes left of screentime. The actual Final Boss is the Shaman.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Melanie considers herself to be the true ruler of the city, dismissing Hilda as a “crazy bitch” hiding in a cave, and reminding June 27 that while Hilda started the revolution that put them in power, Melanie was the one who got it paid for. She sees Hilda as little more than a tool to be wheeled out for a ratings boost on her show, while her own use of the media and The Culling events are what keep the Van Der Koys popular and in power. However, It's Personal between Boy and Hilda, so regardless of whether Melanie really is more powerful than Hilda, Boy still sees her as a secondary target and she’s accordingly dispatched before he reaches Hilda.
• Easily Forgiven: June 27 has been security chief of the Van Den Koy dynasty for years, and by her own admission during that time she has been making the people of the City suffer over the loss of her brother, but as soon as she sides with Boy he seemingly acts as if none of that ever happened.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Dave is a drugged up enforcer who manages to hold his own against Boy for a while due to Confusion Fu and Major Injury Underreaction.
  • June 27 proves to be Boy's equal and has enough authority to countermand Glen and Gideon.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Unlike the rest of her family, who all seem to hate each other, Hilda genuinely loves her children. Subverted when she shows no qualms in ordering her daughter to kill her son.
  • June 27 deeply loves her brother, and is willing to kill her mother the moment he shows a sign of remembering her.
• Even Evil Has Standards: June 27 will ruthlessly enforce the will of the Van Der Koy family, but she absolutely draws the line at harming and killing children. The fact that being forced to murder children is what drove Boy to run away and apparently die might have something to do with that particular scruple.
• Evil Mentor: The Shaman, who mutilated and brainwashed Boy in order to make him kill his own mother.
• Evil Old Folks: Gram Gram Beatrice, the grandmother of the Van Der Koy family, is as nasty as you would expect from the ultimate matriarch of such a clan. After Hilda's death she is the one who orders all the remaining troops to kill her great-grandchildren.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Van Der Koys are a ruthless tyrannical family. However The Shaman is revealed to be just as evil as they are with everything he put Boy through and the fact he was using him as a tool for his revenge.
• Exact Words: The Shaman repeatedly tells Boy that he "is the weapon." At first, it seems to mean that Boy shouldn't be reliant on actual weapons and instead focus on training himself. In reality, he's referring to the fact that he's brainwashed Boy into being his weapon against Hilda.
• Expressive Mask: June 27's high-tech motorcycle helmet displays words and emojis on its visor so she can communicate without having to talk to anyone. How her thoughts are conveyed to the helmet without her dictating them or writing them is never explained.
• Extremely Short Timespan: While the start of Boy’s journey took place with the death of his family as a child, from the moment he first steps foot back in the city after his training the rest of the movie’s events take place over a single day, which just so happens to be the annual Culling event that the Van Der Koys use to boost their popularity and secure their power.
• Face Death with Dignity: Gideon, already dying from being shot in the back by Melanie, casually tells Boy to "do what you gotta do" and doesn't flinch when he's beheaded.
• The Faceless: June 27, the Van Der Koys' main enforcer wears a high-tech motorcycle helmet at all times which conceals her face, which isn't dramatically revealed until halfway through the film.
• Faceless Goons: The majority of the rank and file mooks working for the Van Der Koys wear masks which conceal their faces.
• Facial Horror:
  • Glen has a bench press accidentally dropped on his face by Basho while being interrogated, crushing his entire head into a bloody mess.
  • One of the kitchen workers Boy fights has part of his cheek torn off by a cheese grater.
  • One of the innocent victims of Melanie's winter wonderland Culling is killed by having hooks inserted at either side of his mouth and then pulled. A Gory Discretion Shot and Vomit Indiscretion Shot follow.
  • The support rods attached to the camera that Boy rams into Melanie's head clearly do something bloody to her face and neck area, but it's shown from the camera's POV and the lens cracks and distorts upon impact.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • After Boy starts his mission to kill Hilda, nobody he interacts with in the city seems to realize that he is deaf and most importantly, mute. They all seem to think that he is simply being The Quiet One or refusing to answer questions.
  • Likewise, nobody notices the chef (Boy in disguise) absently grating cheese over nothing as he walks around the mansion.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Basho dramatically introduces Boy to the resistance, only to find the apartment is empty and all that's left is a single man.
• Fake Memories: That flashback of Boy's family being killed by the Van Der Koys we were shown in the intro? That turned out to be nothing more than a result of the Shaman brainwashing Boy through a combination of torture and drugs to turn him into his own weapon of revenge against Hilda.
• Fantastic Drug: The unnamed aerosol drug which acts as a Super Serum that can turn a regular Mook called Dave into a Determinator Elite Mook who can shrug off pain and even limb removal appears to be some kind of 'upper' designer drug in the setting which he has presumably abused, as Melanie is seen using the same inhaler-style device without any similar side-effects.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Hilda calls off her goons when the protagonist shows her a crayon drawing his sister once made. It turns out she recognizes it because her daughter drew it.
• Flipping the Bird: During one flashback, Mina and Boy flip off a statue of Hilda times five (by holding out their full palms). Boy recalling this is what turns Mina/June 27 against Hilda.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There's a number of clues hinting at the fact that Hilda Van Der Koy is Boy's mother.
    • If Hilda was willing to kill a little girl, why would she only have Boy left a deaf mute? Because she didn't kill Boy's family and the Shaman was the one to deafen him and cut out his tongue.
    • When she sees Boy for the first time, Hilda does a noticeable double take at his appearance.
    • Boy remembers eating Frosty Puffs with his sister, the same cereal company that endorses the Culling, despite his mother's hatred for the Van Der Koy regime. When Melanie is arranging for Hilda to introduce the Culling in Glen's absence, she notably instructs an underling to make sure Hilda doesn't see who the event's sponsor is.
    • The Shaman made Boy eat small bowls filled with bugs while keeping a whole roasted chicken for himself, due to still hating Boy for killing his family.
    • Boy remembers his sister very loudly proclaiming that she's going to give an extra rude middle finger to a statue of Hilda Van Der Koy in the middle of a public park, which both siblings then proceed to do very flamboyantly, without a care that anyone might see them. The reason they can get away with such a very public display in a tyrannical police state is because they are the tyrant's children.
    • Boy's picture of his mother doesn't feature him or his sister, because it's a cropped picture of the Shaman's wife.
    • The build-up to, and appearance of, Hilda at the Culling is forced to be improvised and has to work around her instability; even then she goes off-script and very nearly shoots an imaginary figment of the Shaman while reveling in violence. That's not far off from Boy's own instability and imagining of his sister, and it's not far off from him breaking away from the Shaman's plans earlier in the film.
  • There are also a number of things foreshadowing the fact that June 27 is Boy's sister:
    • June 27 hardly ever speaks, only communicating through text displays in the visor of her motorcycle helmet paralleling her brother's muteness.
    • When the Van Der Koys become hard pressed for victims for the latest Culling, June 27 is absolutely adamant that no children will be taken or harmed and her orders carry enough weight to countermand Gideon and Glen’s order, which is no surprise given that she’s Hilda’s daughter.
    • June 27 is the only one in the Van Der Koy camp who is the Boy’s equal at hand-to-hand combat, again drawing a parallel between them.
    • During his Training Montage at the beginning, Boy gets the upper hand over The Shaman during a knife fight and is forcing the blade down towards him in an adrenaline rush until he's distracted by his hallucination of child Mina, who represents his subconscious guilt over his more brutal and heartless actions, such as currently endangering the life of his Parental Substitute. This allows The Shaman to gain the upper hand with his distraction and knock him down, winning the fight. During their fight, Boy succeeds in knocking off June 27's motorbike helmet, exposing her face, which causes Boy to see another hallucination of Mina which distracts him enough for the Van Der Koy enforcer to knock him out too. Subconsciously, Boy recognises the adult Mina and his guilt over fighting his beloved sister distracts him enough to lose the fight.
  • Sharp-eared viewers will pick up on the fact that when Boy first infiltrates the mansion disguised as a chef, the butler loudly announces to the staff that "the dinner scene is about to begin", foreshadowing the reveal a few minutes later that the whole annual dinner is a staged and scripted setup put on by Gideon to lure people trying to kill Hilda.
  • Basho and Benny's plan is ultimately revealed to be to have Boy create a diversion by attacking the Van Der Koys full on, and sneak in past their security while they are distracted and focused on him. Fast forward to the climax of the film, and it is revealed that this was also the Shaman's plan, as he used the confusion caused by Boy attack to be able to infiltrate the bunker undetected while all eyes were in him. Only Hilda saw through it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: One that doubles as a Riddle for the Ages, as sharp-eyed viewers will notice that the painting hanging in the wall of Hilda's bunker which reveals Boys identity also features a man whose face has been violently scratched out. Who this person might be (Hilda's husband? Hilda's father? Gram Gram's husband?) or what possible reason Hilda might've had for lashing out so violently at his portrait are left completely up to the audience's imagination.
• Hallucinations: Besides the Mushroom Samba moments, Boy also tends to hallucinate his dead little sister talking to him. While at times, she seems whimsical, overall she seems to be a manifestation of his guilt, such as when he hesitates to kill Gideon who helped him. She pointedly appears both when he's on the verge of seriously harming The Shaman and manages to knock June 27's helmet off, showcasing his subconscious guilt towards harming those he cares for. By the climax of his fight with The Shaman, once his true nature has been exposed to Boy, a hallucination of his younger damaged self appears when Boy and the Shaman are struggling over pushing The Shaman's fanged necklace into his throat. Having now been made aware of his manipulations and lack of care for him, this hallucination represent's Boy's buried pain, sorrow and anger over his Training from Hell and isolation over the years, giving him the strength to overpower his master, showing by the younger Boy putting his hand down on top of Boy's adult hands to push the necklace in.
• Harmful to Minors: Hilda forced Boy to execute the Shaman's family when Boy was just a child.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Glen appeared to be having a genuine change of heart and deciding to help Boy and Basho infiltrate the mansion to kill Hilda, when Basho accidentally drops a heavy piece of machinery on his head crushing it.
• Henpecked Husband: It’s very clear who wears the trousers in Glen and Melanie’s marriage (there’s a reason why he’s taken her surname), and Glen is visibly nervous when he has to report to Melanie that he’s failed to gather the full complement of victims needed for her Culling show, to the point that he actually flinches when she turns her gaze on him. In the Creative Closing Credits that show comic book style artwork of the characters alongside their actors' names, when the artwork of Melanie is shown in a triumphant pose with her shotgun held aloft, Glen is depicted kneeling at her feet in the stereotypically feminine Leg Cling position.
• Hero Killer: Melanie is the only villain in the film to inflict actual casualties on the good guys, killing Benny when he Takes the Bullet for Boy and fatally wounding Basho, along with Gideon for his defection from decadence.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • Glen shoots at a woman for insulting him and misses by several feet from maybe twenty feet away.
  • The Van Der Koy's mooks can seemingly hit everything but what they're shooting at, such as one with a minigun being unable to hit Boy or June 27 in a straight hallway with tiny alcoves or several guards firing at Boy with machine guns while he's on an elevated walkway and missing every time.
• Improbable Weapon User: Boy uses anything he can get his hands on as a weapon, including a cheese grater, a necklace, and a fake carrot, though he prefers knives and guns when he can get them.
• Inner Monologue: Boy has one that he took from an arcade fighting game he and his sister played and it allows him to silently respond to the people around him.
• Land of One City: The story takes place in a city-state under the control of the Van der Koy family.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Anna the Flower Girl who Boy sees earlier in the movie, praises and supports the Van Der Koy family. Later on in the movie we see her at The Culling being forced to participate in the event where she is violently murdered by the Van Der Koys henchmen
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: The Shaman puts Boy through a Training from Hell since childhood in order to turn him into a One-Man Army with a single purpose: To Kill Hilda Van Der Koy. It is eventually revealed that the Shaman did this to avenge his own family and not the Boy's… who were actually the Van Der Koys.
• Late to the Realization: It takes Basho all the way until the climax to note that Boy "doesn't talk much".
• Logical Weakness: Shaman's brainwashing of Boy to hate his mother has a noticeable flaw because it doesn't touch Boy's memories of his sister, which allows him to reconnect with June 27 and spoil Shaman's vengeance.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Hilda is Boy's mother.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Due to the drugs he's on, Dave keeps getting back up to fight Boy. When smacked in the jaw with a hammer, he simply pushes his jaw back in place and takes another puff. Even getting his hand stuck in a vice merely results in him tearing his own arm off to keep fighting. It takes Boy cutting off his leg, thus rendering him physically incapable of getting back up, to keep him down.
• Matricide: June 27 kills Hilda with a hatchet to the head when Hilda orders Boy's death.
• Metaphorgotten: While interrogating Boy, Gideon expounds how the Culling is "Nothing but a wild goose chase" and that it's gone on for so long that "There's no geese left. We're catching pigeons." Unsurprisingly, Boy stares at him in complete confusion.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Gideon is genuinely terrible as The Brute, spending more time focusing on writing rather ridiculous speeches than actually enforcing anything.
• Misplaced Retribution: As she admits to him while escaping the bunker, June 27 took out her pain and grief over the loss of her brother out on the people of the City, who had nothing to do with the Shaman kidnapping him.
• Mood Whiplash: Boy begins bonding with Anna the Flower Girl, who offers him a free flower, right up until she begins excitedly talking about how much she loves The Culling. He angrily throws her flower back at her and storms off.
• Mundane Luxury: While infiltrating the Van Der Koy mansion, Boy tastes a macaroon and goes wide-eyed at how great they are, promptly wolfing down an entire plate.
• Murder in the Family: Hoo, boy:
  • Melanie and Gideon hit each other with an indirect Mutual Kill; Gideon by slipping Boy a weapon so he can cut his bonds and get loose in the Culling which ultimately puts him in position to kill Melanie, and Melanie by shooting Gideon in the back as punishment for his betrayal, which leaves him probably fatally wounded as it is, but definitely unable to escape Boy or stop him from finishing the job.
  • After The Reveal that Boy is Hilda’s missing son, abducted and brainwashed by the Shaman, he realises that he’s been turned into a weapon designed to kill his own mother, and that he's already killed his aunt Melanie and uncles Gideon and Glen.
  • No longer recognising any of her beloved son in Boy, Hilda tries to Off The Offspring, but being a Non-Action Big Bad she asks June 27 to do it. Because June is Boy’s long-lost sister, she instead performs a Bodyguard Betrayal and buries a hatchet in Hilda’s head, completing Boy’s mission and making both of them Self Made Orphans.
  • And to round it all up, their Great-grandmother immediately orders all remaining mooks to kill her great-grandchildren in retaliation.
• Muscles Are Meaningless:
  • The Shaman is a small, slimly built man, but he has no trouble fighting and handing the Boy his ass during training, despite the fact that Boy is well over a foot taller than him, and probably outweighs him two-to-one in muscle. During their actual fight to the death, he is more than a match for both (the admittedly heavily wounded) Boy and June 27 fighting together.
  • June 27 also doesn’t have any trouble going toe to toe with Boy in hand to hand combat despite being half his size, and regularly swings her hatchets with enough force to sever limbs.
• Mushroom Samba: The drugs Shaman uses and at times forces on Boy causes him to hallucinate things like Shaman saying things he'd never say or having his eyes float away like bubbles.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: Due to the passage of several years, both sides presuming each other dead, and Boy's Fake Memories, Boy and the Van Der Koys don't recognize each other until Boy produces Mina's childhood drawing of their perfect place.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Hilda is not a hands on Big Bad by any stretch of the imagination. At no point of the film is it even suggested that she personally engage in combat, as such things are delegated to Gideon and June 27.
• No Name Given: Boy, the Shaman, and June 27. This last one is eventually subverted when it is revealed that she is Boy's sister Mina.
• Noodle Incident: What exactly happened to the rest of the resistance, barring the fact they were likely killed, is never answered as it's told from Boy's perspective, who can't understand Benny.
• Obviously Evil: The Van Der Koys have legions of Faceless Mooks, enforce an Evil Wears Black dress code alongside the Sigil Spam of the Van Der Koy flower (although Melanie and Glen prefer Red and Black and Evil All Over, possibly hinting towards her Starscream-like attitude towards Hilda), make liberal use of Public Execution and a yearly Rigged Spectacle Fight to eliminate "dissidents" (i.e. innocent people because there are no real dissidents left), and when they appear in public they make very little effort to hide their psychopathic, Stupid Evil or Evil Is Petty tendencies from the populace. Despite this they remain Villains With Good Publicity and enjoy tremendous support among the people; Melanie's PR wizardry generally gets the credit for this, but the obviousness of their evil is so pronounced that Willing Suspension of Disbelief is definitely required.
• Offing the Offspring: Hilda decides to kill Boy, her son, after deciding there's nothing left except the weapon the Shaman turned him into.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Boy increasingly gets this during his fight with Dave when the man keeps breaking bones, losing limbs but still keeps coming after him.
  • Despite her bluster, Melanie gets this moments before her death when she realizes just how Boy is about to kill her.
  • Hilda has this when Boy shows her his childhood drawing because she suddenly realizes she was about to execute her own son in cold blood and quickly calls off her men.
• One-Man Army: Boy is perfectly capable of wiping out armies of mooks despite typically being outnumbered 20 to one. Only June 27 is a match for his combat skills. When they team up for the final battle, limbs start flying.
• Original Position Fallacy: Anna the flower girl loves watching people die in the Culling. She is noticeably less enthused when it's her head on the chopping block.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • All three of the Van Der Koy children predecease Gram Gram.
  • The Shaman's children turn out to have been killed by Hilda and the child Boy, and his goal is to avenge their deaths along with that of his wife.
• The Paranoiac: Hilda, who hasn't left her bunker in years, sees enemies everywhere, and tries to maintain her iron grip on society by any means necessary.
• Parody Product Placement: Frosty Puffs is a kid-friendly breakfast cereal with colourful mascot characters, and is a long-lasting enough brand that Boy was eating it as a child. Melanie Van Der Koy has, somehow, arranged for them to sponsor the latest iteration of the Culling, a televised slaughter of innocent people, and they've even allowed Melanie's executioners to wear costumes of their characters during the event. Either Frosty Puffs are an Evil, Inc., or Melanie is just that persuasive.
  Melanie: I'm a goddamn broadcasting miracle worker! Do you know how hard it is to get a cereal company to sponsor mass murder?! THAT WAS ME!
• Post-Climax Confrontation: After Hilda is killed and Boy and June 27 escape the bunker, their elevator is called back down, where they're forced to fight the Shaman, who insists on killing June 27 as well despite Boy's protests.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • For years Gideon has taken the precaution of having a group of actors pretend to be the Van Der Koys during the annual pre-Culling family dinner at the Mansion on the assumption that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to assassinate Hilda and/or or the whole family during this time when they were exposed. He turns out to be completely justified.
  • Hilda has continued with the Culling even decades after every trace of resistance and opposition to the Van Der Koy regime in the city has been completely eradicated, to the point that Gideon and Glen have trouble even finding a dozen people every year to put a good show, a state of affairs that Gideon attributes to the fact that the Shaman remains at large and Hilda is convinced he is coming for her. As the audience knows from the very start of the film, she is completely right.
  • Hilda is completely convinced that the Shaman was somewhere in the audience at the Culling itself, seemingly more of her paranoia. But it's later revealed he actually was present.
• Real After All:
  • Boy has hallucinations of his dead sister for most of the film, except it turns out that she had never died in the first place.
  • Some of the memories Boy has of his childhood are actually real, namely: playing videogames with his sister (where he got his inner voice from), her explaining her plan to "escape this totalitarian hellhole" via crayon drawings (which even his mother recognizes), and the episode where they came up with a secret way Flipping the Bird at their mother's statue (the recalling of which convinces June 27 to side with him during the climax)..
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Melanie and Glen both use this colour scheme liberally, making them stand out among the Van Der Koy forces who stick to the Dynasty's colors of yellow and black.
• The Reveal: The Shaman kidnapped, mutilated, and brainwashed boy into believing Hilda killed his family. In reality, Hilda is Boy's mother and June 27 is his sister.
• Revenge Before Reason: The Shaman would have survived and potentially prospered, given all the Van Der Koys were dead and the regime overthrown, had he just allowed Boy's little sister, June 27, to live. She was even younger than Boy when the Shaman's family died and had nothing to do with his suffering, but he insisted the entire family had to be wiped out like his own was, leading to his death when Boy refuses to let him kill his sister.
• Rule of Three: Twice during Boy's fight against Dave, a drugged up guard with "a lot of issues".
  • Dave gets back up three times after Boy thought he'd beaten him. First from a normal beating, then from hitting him in the jaw with a hammer, and finally from getting his arm stuck in a vice.
  • Boy declares himself the winner only to pull an Inner Monologue Equivalent of a Verbal Backspace each time Dave gets back up.
• Running Gag:
  • Boy has no idea what Benny, one of the resistance, is saying (due to his bushy beard) and keeps hearing random words which he then imagines as he tries to make sense of them, such as him and Basho cutting off a farmer's foot.
  • Other members of the Van Der Koy family keep shitting on and belittling Gideon's writing and artistic pursuits. Over the course of the film Glen, Melanie and Gram Gram all do it.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Boy is amazing at parkour, as well as armed and unarmed combat, but completely helpless at planning, socializing, or even showing emotion.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Boy's hallucinations of his sister are often detrimental to him, distracting him at critical moments or goading him into making poor decisions to protect a figment of his imagination.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: At the end of the Culling event that acts as the climax for the second act, Melanie's Villainous Breakdown results in the end of the Snark-to-Snark Combat of her and Gideon's Sibling Rivalry when she shoots him for helping Boy ruin her show, and she then goes on to kill overt Comic Relief characters Basho and Benny before being killed by Boy in turn. Also Boy's comedic inner voice almost completely vanishes save for one or two words during the climax. This leaves the stage much clearer of characters for the darker and more intimate conflict of the final act between Boy, Hilda and June 27.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: When Boy, Basho and Benny spoil Melanie's winter wonderland Culling show and deplete her Mooks, she wades in herself with an Armsel Striker and applies More Dakka to compensate for her lack of melee combat ability. Unfortunately for the fledgling Resistance, it's quite effective.
• Shout-Out:
  • Befitting of someone who's a fan of arcade games, Boy quotes the Street Fighter II announcer when fighting Dave. He also quips "Fatality!" after finally putting the bastard down.
  • Boy and his sister's escape plan as kids has them sneaking out of their home with a cardboard box.
  • The entire final battle with the Shaman is one big homage to the final fight in The Raid, right down to the Shaman's actor spending most of the fight having the upper-hand on two siblings tag-teaming him only to be ultimately done in by an Improvised Weapon to the throat.
  • June 27's outfit is identical to RUINER's protagonist — a blend of street clothes and cyberpunk combat gear, down to the hi-tech helmet that displays relevant messages.
• Sibling Team: Boy and his imaginary sister... initially and ineptly, as all the imaginary sister does is distract him at the worst moments. Boy and the alive all along Mina team up in the climax to battle their way out of Hilda's bunker and then face the Shaman.
• Sigil Spam: The crest of the Van Der Koy Dynasty, a four-petal yellow flower on a black field, is positively everywhere in the city.
• Slave to PR: Melanie is a shrewd businesswoman and PR whizz who arranges the regime's Bread and Circuses (complete with Product Placement) and doesn't care about anyone or anything except the TV ratings that her events get. This is mostly how the Van Der Koys get to keep being Villains With Good Publicity despite being so Obviously Evil.
• The Stinger: There is a post credits scene featuring Boy and June 27, patched up and eating cereal together somewhere in the jungle, confirming that they both made it out of the City alive.
• Stupid Evil: Glen decides to shoot a woman for insulting him. When he misses and kills a random man instead, he thinks he can calm the ensuing riot by saying "he's sorry." Eventually, Gideon just orders everyone present killed rather than let Glen continue to mess things up.
• Tragic Villain: Played with in regards to the Shaman. While his backstory is pitiful (watching his entire family being killed on the orders of Hilda Van Der Koy), he loses sympathy with the Training from Hell he puts Boy through solely out of revenge.
• Training from Hell: The Shaman's training for Boy involves being Buried Alive, rolling a giant stone head up a hill, and knife fighting while tied to the Shaman, among other things. It's less to do with making Boy strong and more to do with him still hating Boy for killing his family.
• Uncertain Doom: At the climax of the movie, when the elevator with Boy and June 27 is called back down to the bunker they find all the remaining mooks in the outer hall dead and the Shaman standing among their bodies. But it is never revealed what happened to Gram Gram and the other people in the inner chamber. The Shaman saying there is still one Van Der Koy left to kill would imply he already slaughtered everyone in the inner chamber while the siblings fought their way through the outer hall, but it is never confirmed.
• The Unfought: By the time Boy catches up with Gideon, he's an Almost Dead Guy courtesy of Melanie shooting him in the back during her Villainous Breakdown, although he's pretty accepting of it. He even jokes that Boy isn't going to get to have a boss encounter with him.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Boy seems to completely ruin Basho's and Benny's plan because he can't understand the latter's explanation. In the climax, it's revealed he followed their plan perfectly: Create a distraction so they can sneak in and replace the guards then follow him to where Hilda is actually being kept.
• Vague Age: Between the flashback of the Van Der Koys executing Boy’s family when he was a child and the present day, Hilda, Melanie and Gideon don’t visibly age a single day, with only their hairstyles and outfits changing, meaning they were all either much Younger Than They Look in the flashback or much Older Than They Look in the present. This even applies to Gram Gram, who is Hilda's ‘’grandmother'', and judging by the painting in the bunker, has barely aged since she sat for it.
• Verbal Backspace: Boy has a few Inner Monologue equivalents.
  • After getting Dave stuck in Boy, declares his victory, only for Dave to prove him wrong.
    Boy: Player one wins!
    [Dave rips off his own arm]
    Boy: Player two is fucking crazy!
  • When Benny is telling Basho something that Boy thinks sounds like "Dodon buns", Boy thinks they sound fun. Then Basho starts sobbing and he quickly corrects himself that clearly they aren't fun.
• Villain with Good Publicity: As demonstrated by the flower peddler Boy encounters in the market, many of the city's inhabitants seem to genuinely look up and admire the Van Der Koys, even among the very poor.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Van Der Koys go in for a few different flavours of this:
  • Glen Ain't Too Proud to Beg and even offers to help Boy and the Resistance bring down Hilda, but Basho accidentally drops the heavy machine part he’s holding above Glen before he can be of any assistance, although realistically he probably wouldn’t have been.
  • Melanie cries Broken Tears as she rages at Gideon for helping Boy ruin the Culling broadcast she spent months arranging, and then starts Chewing the Scenery and spraying More Dakka, taking out both good guys and bad guys before Boy brings her down.
  • Hilda shrieks hysterically for Boy to be killed, but instead June 27 strikes Hilda dead with a hatchet.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: There is no clue whatsoever as to where the unnamed city-state where the story takes place is located. It is clearly a tropical place, but other than that, there's nothing about the culture or architecture that could help pin it down, the ethnic composition of the population is all over the place and the fact that everyone is speaking and writing in English could very well be just Translation Convention. Word of God calling the setting "post-apocalyptic" doesn't help settle matters either.
• Word-Salad Humor: Because of his bushy beard, Boy can't read Benny's lips accurately, resulting in a Running Gag of him just "hearing" random words that make no sense.
• Would Harm a Child: The Shaman has no problem brutally beating Boy during his training. Then it's revealed he almost murdered him years prior for killing his family.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: It's heavily implied that even if Boy had complied with The Shaman's demand to kill his sister, his sadistic mentor would have turned on him at some point to utterly wipe the Van Der Koy bloodline out entirely (with the implications that he snuck into the bunker and personally assassinated the superfluous Gram Gram in the chaos by the end). He merely demanded Boy personally kill his sister to enforce a Sadistic Choice on him by the end, either forcing him to deal with the guilt of wiping out all his own family or allow The Shaman the excuse to kill him there and then.

---