Remember, remember the 5th of November. Roman candles, aliens, and pot. I see no reason why Attack the Block should ever be forgot.
South London is bathed in the glow of fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, but those aren’t the only things lighting up the night sky. As a young nurse is coming home from a late shift at work, she’s accosted and mugged by a group of masked youths as she turns a blind alley. In the middle of this mugging, something comes crashing down into a Volvo, pretty much turning it into a smoldering hunk of metal and glass. She uses this distraction to escape and the youths check it out. Leaping from the car, a small white creature with no eyes attacks and runs away. They follow it, soften it up with fireworks, and kill it.
This is the first five minutes of Attack the Block (currently streaming on HBO Max), a hidden gem from 2011 that not enough people have seen and fewer still are talking about as much as they should be, despite its RT score of 91% at the time of posting. I really appreciate a movie that doesn’t hang around and gets to its story quickly. You went to the theater (or, increasingly scrolled and clicked on it from your sofa), because you know what it’s about; we don’t need a half hour preamble before the action starts. It’s a fairly simple plot. On Guy Fawkes Day, aliens drop from the sky and land in South London with the festivities covering their landing. These kids, aspiring gang members and drug dealers, see the scale of the invasion while showing off their extraterrestrial trophy like Hector dragging Achilles through the streets, and gear up to protect the block, their tower block council estate (essentially a high rise British version of a housing project) from the invaders. What ensues is a fight for survival, sure, but it’s so much more.
Attack the Block is not only a pulse-pounding sci-fi creature feature, it’s also seriously funny, smartly written, and has something to say about racial and economic tension in England (which, sadly, feels very universal, still, over a decade later). A movie this polished and well acted makes it hard to believe that it was not only a debut feature for the writer/director Joe Cornish and many of the then-unknown actors, but it was also made for a relatively scant reported $13 million dollar budget. John Boyega plays Moses, the leader of the group, who went on later to play Finn in Star Wars; Jodie Whittaker plays Sam, long before she became the first woman to play The Doctor in Doctor Who, the young nurse who is mugged in the opening scene; Franz Drameh plays Dennis, who you may know from the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow as one half of Firestorm (the half that isn’t Victor Garber), as well as other unknowns were cast in their roles and played them very naturally. One of the major standouts is Alex Esmail, who plays a kid called Pest and is anything but, offering a lot of the movie’s comedic relief and a large part of its heart as well. He’s a great character and adds a lot to the ensemble’s dynamic. Also in a minor role is Nick Frost, who, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is kind of a legend when it comes to this sort of sci-fi action horror-comedy. While he doesn’t have much screen time, he is a real delight.
When the teens see what’s happening to their block, their neighborhood, their home, they don’t hesitate to do whatever it takes to protect it. And this is England and they’re teenagers, so their options are fairly limited. Bottle rockets and other fireworks take the place of guns; baseball bats, pipes, and a sword, somehow, handle things when it gets up close and personal. But it turns out the rest of the aliens that have come to earth aren’t like the small one they killed. They’re bigger, meaner, have rows of sharp, shark-style glowing teeth, and they’re so dark, they’re almost Vantablack—a very convincing effect used by overlaying CGI on to physical effects (most impressively for a low budget film, the glowing teeth were done using animatronics)—so they’re kind of outgunned, so to speak. At one point, one of them says “Right now, I feel like going home, locking the door, and playing FIFA” (which is how I felt almost every day at my old job, so I can relate), but they don’t; they step up to protect the block when nobody else will. And here is where this movie really starts to differentiate itself from most big budget blockbusters. This isn’t about the military response, the police play a small, antagonistic role to our heroes, and there are no drawn out high level discussions or political backstabbing. It’s a very ground level world they’re in, despite being stories up in the block.
In some ways, it’s kind of an anti-Independence Day. It’s so refreshing to see a movie about an alien invasion that isn’t focused on the top level response. There are no secret conversations or talks about the right time to inform the public. Even brilliant, cerebral sci-fi films like Arrival and Annihilation often spend their time with the best and brightest, with all the resources at their disposal, with their efforts behind closed doors. In Attack the Block, the conversations that happen are there to disseminate information to those who need it and to talk about society as whole—when someone suggests they call the police for help, the immediate reaction is distrust. They’re more afraid of the police than they are of the aliens. At one point, the idea is even floated that the creatures were created in a lab as a way to hunt down Black people because the police and drugs weren’t killing them fast enough. Very heavy shades of the theory that the CIA introduced crack cocaine to Black neighborhoods in the US—there is no trust here. And it makes sense. These are young, mostly Black “hoodies”; youths who have little to no prospects, grow up in poverty, and are often vilified as nothing but a criminal element, a state of decay in the culture. For a time in England, it was hoodies that were the most terrifying monsters imaginable. It became slang, dehumanizing the young and the poor; laws were passed, children were arrested, and stores that sold hoodies banned the wearing of them. [Certainly, I am not the most qualified to talk about this; I am not English, despite the amount of Top Gear and Fawlty Towers I’ve watched over the years, and I am not and was never an impoverished inner city youth. But I found a great deep dive analysis of the film and its place in that time and society here if you are so inclined to learn more about it—after you watch the film, of course.]
Here, the hoodie, whether the garment or person, is a symbol of the real economic tensions that exist both in the world and in the film; crime was the only viable option they felt they had and when Moses was bumped up by drug dealer Hi-Hatz, a secondary antagonist who comes to the block to make money off them, to selling some coke for him, that was a huge glow up worthy of celebration. When they wanted to warn their friends and family of the alien invasion, their remaining minutes and texts on their prepaid phones became a limiting factor. There is no glamor here; the movie is very clear about the issues at play, but it’s quick, it’s subtle, and it takes you paying attention to see it. The writing is very astute and effective; it doesn’t need long winded soliloquies or speeches and the way it goes about making its point is as sharp as the aliens’ teeth. There’s the block and there’s everyone else. But being in the block, living there, being a neighbor, even if they didn’t know you, that meant you were on the same side. They were together then, they were a team. It’s together that they have a chance to survive.
It’s a film that works on every level and gets better with each repeated viewing. As a piece of entertainment, it is funny, it is clever, it is full of great action. The pacing is excellent; not quite breathless, you do have moments to recover and exhale, but it doesn’t waste any time in its 90 minute length. As science fiction, it is a satisfying fantastical look at the real world. As an action movie, it has pretty much everything you could ask for—explosions, chases, fights, gunplay, the lot. It has genuine moments of horror and very real stakes. The first time I saw it, I liked it a lot. The second time, I loved it. The third inspired me to talk to you about it. I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys any of the genres in which it exists.
Attack the Block is a thrilling science fiction action comedy if you just want to leave it at that. You can pop some corn, veg out, and just enjoy the spectacle. It never looks or feels low budget. It never lags. It’s doesn’t trap you with a bloated 150 minute runtime. But, if you look deeper, it’s a movie about how easy it is to forget that other people are human too and what extremes it takes to remind us that at the end of things, we should all be on the same side and that empathy is always called for. Because that’s how we have a chance to survive.