Don’t be surprised if a modest British import wins more love (if not money) than those costly 3D robots and alien-fighting cowboys and becomes the sci-fi thriller of the summer. Despite its drab title, Attack the Block may also be the summer movie of the summer — the witty, inventive, jump-out-of-your-seat popcorn pic Hollywood frequently promises but rarely delivers.
Amid the fireworks of Guy Fawkes Night in South London, a strange creature falls out of the sky, interrupting the mugging of a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) by a gang of juvenile delinquents. The kids kill the thing, but find themselves besieged when more of its kind arrive, forcing them into an uneasy alliance with their victim (the nurse, not the dead alien). For protection, they arm themselves with firecrackers, baseball bats, and — in an entertainingly improbable touch — katanas. Although clearly excited by this unexpected adventure, they’re also terrified and plagued by the insufficiency of their resources: their bikes aren’t fast enough to outrace their pursuers, their cellphones run out of minutes at inopportune times, the doors and walls of their tenement flats are too thin to shield them from extraterrestrial fangs. And, as if fighting off hostile creatures weren’t enough, they must also contend with a murderous, megalomaniacal drug dealer who doubts their far-fetched story.
Writer-director Joe Cornish takes his time at the beginning, carefully grounding his fantastical premise in a realistic setting and establishing characters we care about. All this makes matters that much more intense when our unlikely heroes find themselves in grave danger. Once Attack the Block revs up, it doesn’t stop: the film is perfectly paced, using humor to both relieve and escalate tension. The foreboding first act is amusing, and the thrilling second act is hilarious.
In fact, Attack the Block may be mistaken for a comedy, not just because it’s so funny but also because of its pedigree: Cornish is a colleague of Nick Frost (who appears in a supporting role) and Edgar Wright (attached as an executive producer), and the film was financed by the company that made Wright’s Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But, unlike either of those structurally comedic films, Attack the Block is a genuine fright flick, albeit a robustly funny one (with an organic sense of humor and only a handful of blatant references). In an approach more Evil Dead than Evil Dead II, the shocks take precedence, and the jokes build off them. The film is actually less gory than Wright’s comedies, though — Cornish gets so much mileage out of largely bloodless scares that one brief but disturbingly gruesome image seems out of place.
Cornish’s feature debut is stylish and polished and looks better than many similar films that cost 10 times as much. He weaves together several plot threads with the ease of a seasoned director, and even mixes in some social commentary without making a big fuss about it. The performances by the mostly youthful cast are all spot-on, highlighted by John Boyega as Moses, the stoic, prophetically named leader of the gang, and Alex Esmail, its token white boy, who has many of the best lines. The music, by Steven Price and Basement Jaxx, nods to the multicultural setting as well as 1980s B-movie synth scores.
There is an arrogance to American-made alien-visitation movies, in which it’s taken for granted that the extraterrestrials would land in the US. That Attack the Block’s characters have the humility to wonder why interplanetary invaders would choose their ghetto is another mark of the film’s intelligence. It’s refreshing to see a genre picture that respects its audience enough to put real imagination and care into crafting a thrill ride.
