Attack the Block

Attack the Block tells the tale of a group of unlikely comrades who must bind together to stay alive. As Sam is heading home, she is mugged close to home by a group of teenagers. Almost as soon as Sam moves on something falls from the sky right into a nearby car. This ‘something’ turns out to be very nasty, cuts the leader of the gang of teenagers, Moses, and, thereby, incurs his wrath. After beating this thing to death, they head back to the tenement where they live. Once they get there, they celebrate by bringing the body of this thing to the weed dealer, who lives at the top of the building, for a little smoke and advice.

Once they arrive, all hell breaks loose. From then on, they can’t leave the grounds of the tenement, as it is straight up under attack by hoards of aliens. People star dying left and right and the survivors in the building must band together and figure this shit out. Ironically, this group consists of the gang of teenagers, grade-schoolers, teenage girls from the building, a weed dealer and his customers, and Sam, the woman they’d robbed just moments before.

I’m a big fan of sci-fi and horror and, as such, I feel like we’re years into a drought period for these genres. There is basically nothing good being made in this genre and, what this means is, when something good does come out it’s usually good because the filmmaker decided to actually put some focus on story. What I mean is, sci-fi and horror now nothing but eye candy, either full of beautiful, but vapid young actors or nothing more than one series of CGI sequences after another. In this movie, there is almost no CGI, the actors are unknowns who just generally aren’t all that attractive and the story has actual meat to it. The characters develop, the story has meaning and the performances seem natural. It’s not without it’s faults, but it’s a darn good flick and, if you’re a fan of the genre, definitely worth a watch.

S’good