'Attack the Block' out of this world (VIDEO)

Apparently, British comedian/writer Joe Cornish was paying considerable attention while he played bit parts and hung around the sets of his friends' films Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.


Cornish's directorial debut, the glib and manic B-movie monster flick Attack the Block, shares style and attitude with those tongue-in-cheek homages to American shlock.

Indeed, there are moments when predators and assorted angry characters move frenetically toward the camera in a deer-in-the-headlights eye view, you'd swear Shaun director Edgar Wright was actually helming the thing, and not just acting as executive producer.

But it's Cornish's movie with its author's own flourishes. Awash in a hip-hop soundtrack, Attack the Block is about a gang of South London hoods (whose schoolboy street-slang is almost indecipherable) who become the first line of defence when carnivorous aliens with glow-in-the-dark teeth attack the housing development that is their turf. It's dryer in its wit than the aforementioned Wright films, and even flexes a bit of social conscience amid the crazed pandemonium.



The movie begins by punking our ingrained notions of heroes and villains, by introducing, in the worst light possible, the people we'll end up rooting for. Gang leader Moses (John Boyega) roughs up a young nurse (Jodie Whittaker) as the "boyz" take her engagement ring and cellphone. It is at this point that the first of many ET-carrying meteors hit their 'hood. And it would be conventional movie karma for them to immediately meet their end at the fangs of the invader -- feel-good payback for their brutality.

Instead, Attack the Block actually has a character arc amid its elevating hysteria and slaughter. As the police prove impotent (and clueless), circumstances bring the former street predators and crime victim together (along with a trusted pot dealer, played for welcome comic relief by Nick Frost of Shaun and Hot Fuzz fame), and we begin to see the "hoods" for the frightened man-children they are, becoming smaller before our eyes. The first hint comes when we meet the girls in their lives, gum-smacking and terminally unimpressed teens with their peach-fuzzed "gangsta" boyfriends and boy friends.

The real heart of the movie, however, is Moses, who does a complete 180 from anti-hero to hero in his test of manhood. It's an inspiring piece of acting from a young Briton in his first movie role. His surprising gravitas is the gravity that keeps the movie from just sinking into one big blood-splattered goof.



Cornish, meanwhile, has learned his self-referential B-movie lessons well. As with Shaun Of The Dead, Attack The Block doesn't waste a lot of time explaining things. Who are these aliens? Why, if they can be killed, say, by being stabbed with a pair of scissors, were they able to survive a terminal-velocity crash into the London streets? And wouldn't glowing teeth be an impediment to sneaking up on things?

None of this really matters (although the explanation of why they attack this one building is central to the plot's resolution). The creatures are elegantly rendered, reflective black entities that frighten most with what they do not show.

But the most crucial lesson Cornish absorbed was a sense of fun. And Attack the Block is exhilarating, different, and bloody fun indeed.