Sci-fi cult classic Attack the Block will… | Little White Lies

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Sci-fi cult clas­sic Attack the Block will rein­vade cin­e­mas with a sequel

18 May 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

A group of young men wearing dark hoodies and facial coverings, with one man at the centre wearing a red cap and looking directly at the camera.
A group of young men wearing dark hoodies and facial coverings, with one man at the centre wearing a red cap and looking directly at the camera.
John Boye­ga will reprise his role of Moses, with Joe Cor­nish once again set to write and direct.

When the film made its debut in 2011, Joe Cor­nishs rip-roar­ing alien inva­sion pic­ture Attack the Block was the pride and joy of genre enthu­si­asts in the UK. He won over a devot­ed cult fan­base almost instan­ta­neous­ly for his can­ny com­bi­na­tion of break­neck action, eerie bor­der­line hor­ror (who could for­get the engulf­ing black­ness of the extrater­res­tri­al beasts), and crack­ling com­ic dia­logue – and today, the faith­ful are in for anoth­er helping.

Just last night, the news broke that Cor­nish will direct a long-await­ed sequel to the film now a decade old, and that one of the major sell­ing points will return intact. John Boye­ga deliv­ered a break­out per­for­mance back in the day as low-lev­el né’er-do-well Moses, and despite hav­ing since rock­et­ed to super­star­dom on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Star Wars fran­chise, he’s going to reprise the role on which he made his name.

The orig­i­nal film tracked a teenage street gang as they scram­ble to sur­vive dur­ing the onslaught from space, using their wits, their famil­iar­i­ty with the out­lay of pub­lic hous­ing, and a host of unlike­ly weapons to beat back the men­ace. The script more than met the capa­ble cast halfway, bring­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty and resource­ful­ness to the some­what played-out mini­genre of aliens rain­ing death from above.

The plot details of the new instal­ment are expect­ed­ly being kept under wraps, though the smart mon­ey says that crea­tures not of this Earth will bring hav­oc to the streets of Lon­don once again, with some nov­el wrin­kle added to the for­mu­la. If the fates be kind, we may get the chance to revis­it Ron’s Weed Room.

For Cor­nish, return­ing to his great­est suc­cess also makes sense as a career move; he went years after Attack the Block with­out being able to get anoth­er direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture project off the ground, even­tu­al­ly get­ting back in the game with 2019’s sol­id yet under­per­form­ing The Kid Who Would Be King. Who can blame him for giv­ing the peo­ple what they want?

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