As fireworks ascend and explode
in the London skies, down below in the city’s streets a Kennington gang of
teenagers mug a defenceless nurse on her way home from work. The incident is
cut short when an unidentified object crashes down from space and wrecks a car.
This object turns out to be an alien, which the gang’s leader Moses (Joh
Boyega), promptly slaughters, much to the delight of his hooded colleagues. However,
this murder causes a full on alien invasion, and forces the gang to find common
ground with opposing groups in order to survive.
Nowadays it seems necessary for
indie genre films such as this to be self-consciously aware of their status as genre
films. Nods must be made to previous movies, and critics must acknowledge them.
Attack the Block is no different, but
the way it twists generic expectations breathes a refreshing sincerity on an
otherwise tired irony. The opening moments show a gang of kids on bicycles,
carrying an alien. Obviously, the allusion here is to Spielberg’s spell-binding
E.T. However, 80’s American suburbia
has been replaced by the grim reality of 21st century London urbanism, and
those bicycles are now BMXs, that Alien is now a terrifying lupine monster with
giant claws and glow-in-the dark teeth, and those kids are armed with knives
and speak urbane patois-slang. I’m not sure how well Eliot’s E.T. would have
fared with this lot. However, as the
film goes on, and the body count rises, the gang of youths are made to reconcile
with their adversaries. The nurse they mugged (Jodie Whittaker) becomes a key
member of the group’s survival team, and posh kid Brewis (Luke Treadway) is
integral in solving the riddle of the alien’s invasion.
Fittingly, for a film about
aliens, alienation is a recurring theme. With British newspapers dominated by
horror stories of gang violence, stabbings, and muggings coming from London’s estates,
a contemporary film set there would surely have resonances. Attack the Block handles this side of
things very well. It allows for pauses where the teenagers’ backgrounds and
upbringings can be glimpsed it, and taken into account. Sometimes, the harsh
reality of life on an estate is terrifyingly alluded to. I’m thinking of the scene
where arch-drug dealer Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) casually waves his gun’s aim
between two children for information. These two children are so keen to impress
their elders, that they fill a super-soaker with petrol to ignite with
firecrackers. Also, and I don’t know whether this was intentional or not, the
shots of the estate’s main building (as can be seen in the promotional posters
as well as in film) bear a striking resemblance to an alien space ship, as if
to say these inner-city kids are the society’s real extra-terrestrials.
However, it’s important to not get carried away. This is no Kidulthood. Instead, Attack the Block is an energetic science-fiction horror which never takes itself too seriously, and allows for some laughs (and some emotion) on the way. Its comedian Joe Cornish’s debut, and a brilliantly confident one at that.
