Attack The Block

Attack the Block (2011)

89% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 110 reviews)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Joe Cornish

Starring: Jodie Whitaker, John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Leeon Jones, Nick Frost

From: Studio Canal

Now, here is a foreign horror movie that is more to my liking. This import from England appeared in Orlando for a week after playing at various spots across the United States. I heard it was good but I mainly remained in the dark as to what it was really about. Once I made the long drive to the east part of Orlando to check it out with a small crowd, I was quite happy with my decision to check it out.

I’ll try not to spoil things myself but I’ll give a few details. The movie starts off with a quintet of young hoods in South London robbing a young lady, Sam (Whitaker). Something suddenly crashes into a car. The end result is that alien creatures appear, and what wacky creatures they are… in a good way. They’re described as “alien wolf space mother*******”, to paraphrase a little bit. They also happen to have glowing teeth, as if they’re from the Tron universe. They’re actually effective monsters and not silly. It’s all in how they’re presented. They manage to work even if they sound silly as described. So, those young hoods actually do battle with those creatures, and that young lady also gets involved. To reveal more would ruin things, but one character has a Biblical name, and I don’t think that was by happenstance.

So, this movie works extremely well. It has a low budget (an estimated 13 million bucks) but it looks pretty good and there was only a time or two where I thought the low budget hurt things. The monsters look great and never look silly. The pulsating soundtrack is by house music duo Basement Jaxx-yes, the guys who did Where’s Your Head At and Red Alert way back when; I was shocked they were still around-and it fits the movie like a glove and gives thing a constant energy, which is aided by the movie just being well-paced, never allowing you to be bored with it. It has a unique setting, which is a city block in South London, in and out of an apartment building. It has a light tone to it and it’s often pretty funny. After all, some of the characters you see are pot dealers and you do see the ganja get smoked. Also, there’s enough funny dialogue mixed in with the serious stuff to keep it lively. Sure, there's some British slang that is hard to make out to my Yankee ears, but that's no big deal.

The main thing is that this just feels fresh and different from the usual alien invasion film and it’s just a blast to watch. I haven’t seen the similar Super 8 yet but some of the negative things I’ve heard about that makes me think I would prefer this to movie named after the hotel chain (OK, so not really, but I can’t help but think that) anyhow. I am glad I got the chance to see this on the big screen. If only if it would have been in front of a rowdy crowd. Alas, though. I know that this will rank very high on the list of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

I’ll be back Monday night with a new review.