Bill Skarsgard gives an expressive physical performance. His character in the film was formed with two core memories, he wants revenge for his loss of his family at the hands of a paranoid lady dictator and he is particularly haunted by the memory of his fearless younger sister.
Also, his character can neither speak nor hear, so Boy relies on reading lips and his internal monologue is narrated by a arcade fighting game announcer. He constantly trains in the jungle with a lean Asian guy in his 50's called "Shaman," who alternately spars with Boy and blows smoke in his face while laughing. Boy's world is small and limited in the forest, and he hallucinates his younger sister as a child who talks to him and gives commentary on his life and circumstances.
The circumstances could be bleak, but the film's two commentaries of internal announcer narration and sweet childish defiance provide lightness in contrast.
On a trip to the dictators' city, the annual Culling event's preparations are happening, where the streets are raided by the dictatress's foot soldiers to find pockets of unrest and keep the family in power. The dictatress's family is also going slightly insane in their own ways as there has not been serious opposition in years. Hilda is the dictatress matriarch of the family, but her paranoia has caused her to be a hermit in a bunker within her compound, so she is an unstable figurehead. Hilda's younger sister, Melanie, is a marketing obsessive who is having to spin the family's continued justification narrative to the masses and engage in brand partnerships to the Culling, a gladiatorial exhibition televised like a Hunger Games media capital event. Melanie married a photogenic pretty man, Glen, to mold into the face of her marketing announcements to the masses. Hilda & Melanie's brother, Gideon, is a man built like a boxer, but with the soul of a thespian, and Melanie tries to humor his aspirations to keep him in line for his enforcer and interrogation duties for the family. Also, there is a younger woman who is an elite soldier for the family, who wears a daft punk helmet and is dispatched to forcefully pacify of larger groups of unrest.
Boy decides that today he is ready to have his revenge and sneaks into the family compound in the trunk of Glen and Gideon's car after they fumble the public square announcement for why they are taking 12 people from the streets for "crimes against the peace" and therefore deserve to be executed on television.
The action in the movie's fight sequences is fluid and outrageous in its overkill, with many looking like elaborate Mortal Kombat fatality sequences. Boy's fighting skills are tempered by his general anxiety and hyperawareness of having to navigate a hostile environment of his own aggression while deaf. Also, having insane hallucinations of his eight year old sister who is fearless and appears to wander through this environment with fearless abandon like a giant adventure.
I rather enjoyed this movie for leaning into its instability and leaving the audience off balance as to how Boy's simple quest for revenge will be resolved. I especially liked the reminders that he is relying on his vision for his awareness. There are scenes in which he cannot successfully read another character's lips and is "hearing" all kinds of gibberish and imagining what a "guitar robot time dance with a hill farmer" means in an elaborate infiltration plan.
It was goofy, it was gory, it was tragic, it was heartfelt. Bill Skarsgard does an excellent job of portraying naive, traumatized, and determined. He is trapped in being a boy, with idealistic dreams of absolutes and simple love of family being everything. Anything in his way is an obstacle which must be overcome.
Don't say much do ya?
Body communicates pain
From Boy to his world.
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