Attack the Block Review

It’s like Kidulthood meets Alien, in all the best possible ways, you get me fam?

Aliens are cool right? It’s been a while since aliens have come to Britain, let alone London (unless you count Doctor Who), and I was looking forward to what Joe Cornish, in his debut feature length film, had in mind for this urban invasion, I was hoping for high octane action and rich London slang; Attack the Block supplies both by the bucket load.

Attack the block follows a group of London youths, Pest, Dennis, Jerome, Biggz and leader Moses (Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard and Hohn Boyega Respectively) doing what London youths do – mug lone women on their way home from work – in this case Sam (Jodie Whittaker) – a mugging which is quickly disturbed by a falling comet. Said comet turns out to be an alien life form which said Youths (as you would expect) decide to beat the crap out of. After further shenanigans by our loveable thugs, more, larger, aliens, show their furry faces (or should I say teeth), and our Herein Sam has to reluctantly team up with her muggers to fight off the alien threat and defend ‘the block’, where they are further thwarted by a local Drug dealer, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), and (sort of) aided by his drug dealing assistant, Ron (Nick Frost) and Stoner Companion Brewis (Luke Treadaway)

There are some minor twists and turns off this path, but mostly the plot of attack the block is a remarkably simple one. Aliens come, aliens die, credits roll. That is not to say that this is a bad thing, and it certainly helps focus attention to the best parts of the film, the action and the reaction to said action from our slang-rich semi-heroes. The writing is top notch and really there is nothing funnier than waiting for whatever insanely stupid slang phrase or youth culture reference the gang will throw out next, from how many times they can fit the word ‘fam’ into a sentence, to complaining about the lack of credit on their phones, this is London youth culture taken to its highest extreme, with great results (and one that takes me back to my time in college...ah those were the days...) For me, all the young actors did a great job of pushing this forward in a believable way – I’m pretty sure that’s precisely how such youths would react to a alien invasion – one of outward bravado, but inwardly one of a scared child. That is not to say that the characters were all one dimensional stereotypes, and over the film, in between the long spats of action, we learn a little more about our anti-heroes, and actually perhaps start to feel a little compassion towards, especially Moses, played by John Boyega, who evolves from a hateful yob to a understandably confused child in a difficult world to unlike saviour – for a debut performance he is great.

Though probably the only recognisable face is that of Nick Frost, it would be wrong to assume that this is a Nick Frost vehicle. On the contrary, he plays a rather minor role – more than a cameo than anything else – though is on screen time is certainly entertaining.

Obviously the main focus point of the film is on the action, and once it starts, it continues at a high speed pace throughout the film and is continuously exciting throughout. Joe Cornish certainly doesn’t shy away from some good old blood and guts while in between the action tension remains high and there are a number of good bumps and jumps. The aliens themselves, though not overly complicated (mostly they are just glow in the dark teeth and black fur), do their job well, and look relatively good despite a relatively small budget. I think it was a good idea to go for such simple creatures, as more complicated beasts may have looked a little cheesy without a larger budget.

Overall, Attack the Block doesn’t do anything revolutionary in terms of plot or storytelling, but what is does, it does extremely well. The acting is great, both in providing laughs and providing tension as well as a little emotion, and the action is constantly entertaining. If nothing else, Attack the Block is just a lot of fun – well worth watching and as a debut from Director/Writer Joe Cornish, I’m excited to what he does next!