Attack the Block

First came the ad men – Park­er, Scott, Lyne – with their shim­mer­ing reflec­tion of the 1980s: daz­zling, opu­lent, Amer­i­can movies that put Britain on the map in Hol­ly­wood. Then came the tele­vi­sion direc­tors – Win­ter­bot­tom, Green­grass, Yates – the main­stream mav­er­icks reshap­ing the new cen­tu­ry with sub­ver­sive and para­noid blockbusters.

Now it’s the turn of a new gen­er­a­tion – the pop-cul­ture kids raised on videogames and Star Wars, the arrest­ed devel­op­ers who lost their shit to George Lucas and nev­er got it back.

They grew up with E.T. and The Goonies, Mar­ty McFly and Ghost­busters. Hol­ly­wood may have been a galaxy far, far away, but they absorbed the impact and imagery of Amer­i­can film­mak­ing and assim­i­lat­ed it into a new kind of inter­na­tion­al British cin­e­ma. The likes of Matthew Vaughn and Edgar Wright have tak­en gen­res that weren’t con­sid­ered part of our film­mak­ing iden­ti­ty and refash­ioned them into some­thing quin­tes­sen­tial­ly British.

Now Joe Cor­nish has joined the gang – and in style. It’s not as bold as Scott Pil­grim, nor as brazen as Kick-Ass, but Attack the Block is a tri­umphant fusion of British val­ues and Hol­ly­wood magic.

Ever since War of the Worlds was relo­cat­ed from Croy­don to Cal­i­for­nia for Byron Haskin’s 1953 adap­ta­tion, Britain has sac­ri­ficed sci­ence-fic­tion spec­ta­cle to con­cen­trate on the genre’s exis­ten­tial out­er lim­its. Aliens invad­ed more mean­ing­ful places while Blighty sat back and watched. But not any more.

From the moment Attack the Block announces itself with a crane shot of Oval tube sta­tion it is anchored by an unmis­tak­ably British milieu. From here we fol­low trainee nurse, Sam (Jodie Whit­tak­er), as she makes her way home through the kind of unlit streets that will be instant­ly famil­iar to any south Lon­don­er. On one of these streets, close to the estate where she lives, Sam is stopped by a gang of hood­ies and, in anoth­er scene that will be famil­iar to many, is ​‘merked’ for her wal­let and ring.

Just as your heart sinks at the tone of grit­ty urban real­ism, a fire­ball explodes, an alien appears, a beat-down fol­lows and a full on inva­sion kicks off. As night­mare visions of iri­des­cent teeth and gut-knot­ting growls come look­ing for blood, the hood­ies – Pest (Alex Esmail), Den­nis (Franz Drameh), Jerome (Leeon Jones), Big­gz (Simon Howard) and ring­leader Moses (John Boye­ga) – retreat to the block and pre­pare to fight for their lives.

It’s inner city ver­sus out­er space, but it’s more than that, too. It’s ide­al­ism, ambi­tion and audac­i­ty ver­sus the can’t‑do parochial­ism of British-fund­ed film. It’s Cor­nish ver­sus the cyn­ics. The result? Bare slewage.

Actu­al­ly, the fight was rigged. Cor­nish is a first time direc­tor, but he’s not straight off the bus. He cut his teeth as the co-cre­ator of Chan­nel 4’s Adam and Joe Show before pitch­ing up in Hol­ly­wood as one of three British writ­ers on Spiel­berg and Jackson’s Tintin. With those kind of friends it’s no sur­prise that Attack the Block is slick, smart and full of geek-friend­ly nods and winks. But where it real­ly makes a mark is in real­is­ing the hid­den poten­tial of the genre.

The gang’s reac­tion to first con­tact is a superbly orches­trat­ed and dark­ly com­ic riposte to Close Encoun­ters. There are no flash­ing lights, no François Truf­faut. ​“It’s rain­ing mon­keys!” shouts Jerome. They’re not inter­est­ed in social alle­go­ry – these aren’t aliens as asy­lum seek­ers, ​“They’re fuck­ing mon­sters,” says Big­gz. ​“Bare aliens,” agrees Moses. ​“Let’s get tooled up!” con­cludes Pest. It’s in this col­li­sion between the enor­mi­ty of the event and the sim­plic­i­ty of the response that Cor­nish locates many of the film’s best moments.

That these moments work is due in no small part to the cast – most­ly non-pro­fes­sion­al first-timers themselves.They helped Cor­nish devel­op the dia­logue, an inscrutable south Lon­don ver­nac­u­lar that’ll need sub­ti­tles in some parts of Britain, nev­er mind the US. It’s pep­pered with ref­er­ences to Call of Duty, rap music and exact­ly the kind of movie they’re in, blur­ring the already fuzzy bound­aries between the recog­nis­able and the unthink­able. The effect is like see­ing the film’s own audi­ence up on screen, not just play­ing along but play­ing a part.

Attack the Block may be scarce­ly 90 min­utes long, but if there’s one thing Cor­nish has learned from Spiel­berg it’s to use action as char­ac­ter. Yet there’s a sub­tle devel­op­ment of per­son­al­i­ty, too. At first, the gang are lit­tle more than sketch­es. And why not? You think you know these peo­ple from a thou­sand head­lines. ​“They’re fuck­ing ani­mals,” as one old lady puts it.

But as they’re shad­ed, real peo­ple emerge – char­ac­ters worth car­ing about because they go beyond the clichés.The sym­pa­thy and affec­tion that the direc­tor has devel­oped for them is unmis­tak­able, and as the film takes a sharp turn from com­ic to hor­rif­ic, you’ll find your­self ner­vous­ly will­ing them through. Because none of them are safe – as Moses is remind­ed, ​“Every­where you go, bad things hap­pen.” Cor­nish has cit­ed An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don as an inspi­ra­tion, and he earns com­par­isons to John Lan­dis’ film through blood as well as laughs.

Like Amer­i­can­Were­wolf, there are stabs at satire – ​“She’s a nurse, they don’t get paid nuf­fin’,” Pest com­plains to Moses when they find Sam’s hos­pi­tal­ID. But oth­er efforts at infus­ing the film with a polit­i­cal sub­text are more even, with the kids’ easy access to knives a par­tic­u­lar stick­ing point.

Lat­er, though, Pest will con­vinc­ing­ly explain to Sam why they’re able to take events in their stride – walk­ing around in fear of your life is like any oth­er day on the block. At one point, Moses sug­gests that the aliens are a weapon intro­duced by the gov­ern­ment to wipe out black boys, but just when you think that Cor­nish is get­ting car­ried away, the rest of the gang burst into laughter.

The most impor­tant char­ac­ter of all is the block itself. Lit from above and shot from below, it’s the most alien ele­ment of the film. To the peo­ple who live there, it’s more than just a place; it’s an idea, a sym­bol of safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and home. How­ev­er ambiva­lent the res­i­dents them­selves are to those con­cepts, it’s an extend­ed fam­i­ly and trib­al bond; the only time the boys show any remorse is after they realise Sam lives there too – that she is, how­ev­er ten­u­ous­ly, one of them.

But Cor­nish nev­er quite injects the block with enough per­son­al­i­ty. As a cin­e­mat­ic space it feels under­used – strange­ly ster­ile and emp­ty where it should bloom with life to invest the alien threat with its prop­er dra­mat­ic impact. The few peo­ple who do inhab­it it are movie stereo­types – drug deal­ers, gang­sters and com­ic white boys – rather than the flesh and blood peo­ple who could have invest­ed it with real feeling.

And yet per­son­al­i­ty is the thing that Attack the Block has in spades. Cor­nish has suc­cess­ful­ly chan­nelled some of that Spiel­berg star­dust to cre­ate a film whose roots are impos­si­bly exot­ic even while the action is tan­ta­lis­ing­ly close to home. It exudes a sense of des­tiny, of irre­sistible energy.

As a film­mak­er, Cor­nish isn’t yet in the same league as friend and exec-pro­duc­er Edgar Wright, but along­side Wright, Vaughn, Dun­can Jones and Gareth Edwards, he’s part of the bright future of genre film­mak­ing in Britain.