Zombos Says: Excellent
“Oh, I can see its eyes.”
“Not sure those things its eyes…”
Sometimes the simplest premise and the necessities of moderate budget constraints can lead to an understated sci-horror movie that shines with low-key wit, involves us with colorful characters by not forgetting their humanity, and dares to completely tell its story instead of neutering it in hopes of lucrative franchised bastardizations. Joe Cornish manages to accomplish all of this in Attack the Block, a zeitgeist experience, if ever there was one, of realness, fakery, nonplussed attitudes, a variety of cliches, and decade-spanning B-movie horror sensibilities. If that weren’t enough, there’s fur-ball monsters with large day-glo mouths and teeth to match, with wonderfully nondescript black bodies, yet ingenious in design because it’s all about those teeth, and desperately keeping necks, arms, and legs away from them, that propels this sci-horror gem’s action along.
Thomas Townend exploits those wonderful teeth with his cameras in two key scenes: during the first appearance of a fur-ball alien the boys think is as easy a target as the hairless, light-skinned one they attacked and killed earlier, and when pot dealer Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) makes the mistake of not looking out the apartment window. It’s amazing how much bang for the buck you can get from such a simple creature design when paired with those ominous, neon teeth.
The many meteors carrying these aliens crash into the neighborhood on Guy Fawkes Night, while fireworks are going off all around. The first crash comes after would-be youth gang’s Moses (John Boyega), Pest (Alex Esmail), Biggz (Simon Howard), Jerome (Leeon Jones), and Dennis (Franz Drameh) hood up to mug Sam (Jodie Whittaker) in the street as she’s heading home to the Block, the apartment building they all live in. The smashed up car the small meteor hit provides Moses an opportunity to rifle through it, and the chance for Sam to get away. She does, and Moses avoids being nipped by an alien. He and the boys chase after it with youthful abandon, after first grabbing their assorted weapons including bats, a samurai sword, knife, and some firework rockets. Moses kills it and takes it to pot dealer Ron (Nick Frost), who then takes Moses and the creature to see Hi-Hatz, the bigger dope dealer, in his steel-door fortified, ultraviolet-lighted, pot-growing room. Moses is looking for a place to stash the creature safely, but he also wants to impress Hi-Hatz so he can accelerate his criminal career path.
It’s the deviation from this path that Moses must ultimately confront when he realizes the consequences of killing the first alien. The fur-balls are nastier, bigger, and unrelenting in their pursuit of him and his gang, but why they keep coming after him is a mystery eventually explained, while holed up in that fortified pot-growing room, by Brewis (Luke Treadaway), the pothead, nerdy, white kid caught up in the mayhem. (Sure, go ahead; imagine a hash pipe’s worth of Cheech and Chong-styled humor undercut through all this, if you like.)
Between the gang’s bikes and scooters transportation, the frantic chases, Sam and Moses reluctantly teaming up but growing to understand and like each other , Hi-Hatz having it in for Moses because Hi-Hatz refuses to understand or like anyone, the Block’s cramped apartments and dreary hallways becoming a battleground, and those fur-balls climbing the building when they’re not prowling its hallways–you may feel a subdued 1980s deja vu, but the sensation may also bring some 1950s kitsch and 1970s flow along with it, modulated by Steven Price’s techno score.
Then Cornish rythms up with dialog that’s one-liner bright and character revealing, pushing his story up two notches beyond the superficial people-fodder most often seen in horror and sci-horror. You may not like these kids at first, but after the movie, you’ll wish you had them living in your Block when the alien invasion comes.
