Kill Ben Lyk (2018) Review

Kill Ben Lyk (2018) Review

Three people have been murdered in London, all by the name of Ben Lyk. Scotland Yard decides to gather together all the other Ben Lyks located in London until they can figure out who’s after them and why. One of the Ben Lyks is a young Youtuber, he thinks this attention on his name could finally be his shot at becoming an internet celebrity.

Director Erwan Marinopoulos has created a flick that is very well produced, enthusiastically acted and initially promises to be as much fun as the basic concept that informs the storyline. From the beginning it is apparent that KILL BEN LYK is intended to be zany, light-hearted fare and that energy is certainly there onscreen, the problem is that the same energy fails to make it to the other side of the same screen.

I was hooked by the assassin’s mask seen at the film’s start –which brought to mind FANTASTIC FOUR’S Doctor Doom and FLASH GORDON’s Klytus – and the idea of someone killing off people living in London that all have the same name sounded fun. For a brief couple of minutes I was hooked and knowing that the film’s running time weighed in at just an hour-and-a-quarter I was confident that this could go the distance and be the break-out hit it so desperately wants to be.

I should have known better. Normally if a finished film struggles to have much in the way of a running time that’s probably because the creative forces behind the camera didn’t have the material to do so. I hope that makes sense. What I’m trying to say is this should have been a tighter thirty-minute short rather than aim for feature-length. It just doesn’t have the juice and what ideas are all too familiar. Much like the film’s lead character, the film is so desperate for ‘likes’ that it fails to come up ideas of its own and ends up not nearly as much fun as the makers were intending it to be.

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