Review: Attack the Block

Contrary to the opinions of those who live north of the river, plenty of stuff happens in South London. There's a tennis thing every year. We made dubstep in our bedrooms out of clicks and clacks and rat-a-tats we scavenged up in Croydon. We're fairly proficient at murder. All these things and more can be found below the city's belt in London's sweaty crotch.

One thing South London doesn't have is a decent alien invasion. These tend to be reserved for giant American conurbations like New York and Los Angeles; when they do stray over the Atlantic we usually have to make do with a couple of shots of the London Eye falling over or Big Ben blowing up. Even North London got its own zombie apocalypse with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Shaun of the Dead.

With Attack the Block, the debut film by Joe Cornish (of Adam & Joe fame), South London is finally getting its own slice of the supernatural, and we've not been let down. The film follows a group of young muggers and assorted other residents of a Stockwell tower block as they struggle to defend their turf from a batch of snarling, toothy extraterrestrials (or "dem tings", as they are referred to at one point) that have crash landed on the estate. It's a simple set-up that's minimal on exposition, making room for a breakneck pace, punchy dialogue and innovatively orchestrated action scenes.

The aforementioned Shaun of the Dead is one of the first touchstones for Attack the Block, and not only because Edgar Wright is one of the movie's executive producers. The two films share an incredible knack for finding an elegant, unobtrusive balance between humour, characterisation and surprisingly raw horror elements. As our five anti-social heroes, along with the lady they mugged a couple of hours earlier and a foppish suburbanite stoner trapped on the estate, tool up to scrap and scrape through the night, the script makes room for their personalities to bloom in the background without endless reams of clunky exposition.

Attack the Block's performances range from solid to excellent, with the gang's leader Moses a particular standout. Young actor John Boyega brings a bullish physicality to the role, investing Moses with a brooding toughness and fiery charisma reminiscent of a young Denzel Washington. He's the nucleus around which the young punks revolve; his gravitas gives the rest of the gang license to differentiate their characters, from smartmouth whippet Pest to the gentler, altogether more bespectacled Jerome. Special mention should also go to Nick Frost as good-natured drug dealer Ron; though only a peripheral character he makes a disproportionate impact on the film's gag rate.

The Shaun of the Dead comparisons only stretch so far. Audiences are unlikely to find their sides splitting quite so often as with Wright's rom-zom-com; Attack the Block is an action-horror movie first and foremost, and its primary appeal lies in brilliantly kinetic skirmishes. Our boys' encounters with the alien invaders feature pacy chase sequences, claustrophobic brawls through council flats, improvised explosives and more than a couple of grisly demises. In fact, the movie's backdrop of perpetual night and its synthy score often recalls vintage John Carpenter sci-fi like Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. The film's superb sound design also does a great job of modulating the myriad audio cues, cleanly separating bestial screeches, the roar of misused fireworks and clipped one-liners so they never interfere with one another.

The design of the movie's mysterious space critters might be divisive in its simplicity, but Cornish's creature effects team has turned a limited budget into a virtue here. Somewhere in between giant wolves and gorillas in shape, the creatures are wreathed in slimy shadow, the blackness of their forms pierced only by luminous rows of razor sharp teeth. They're bestial and bruising, and their design economically highlights the only thing that matters: those teeth and how fast they can get at your throat.

Attack the Block might not match up to this summer's blockbuster leviathans in scope or budget, but it's almost certainly destined for cult glory. As such, this plucky South London underdog might end up being fondly remembered far longer than even the glossiest superhero epic. Joe Cornish has made a movie that's lean and mean, without much green; a masterclass of economical filmmaking. He may also, at 42 years of age, have emerged as British cinema's exciting new talent, with a movie that feels more youthful and vibrant than any Harry Potter. Fancy that.