"Attack the Block" - Review

There is something brazenly combative about the way that Attack the Block, the first film by director/writer Joe Cornish, begins.  An innocent night sky is almost immediately marred by the arrival of some divine object, possibly a meteorite, which blasts its way across the frame. 

As it plummets to Earth, it is revealed not to be the lone blazing light in the night’s sky.  Fireworks shoot up, as if in almost direct opposition to the heavenly object that hurtles towards its inevitable collision with Earth.

Attack the Block instantly evokes such 80s greats as Aliens and John Carpenter’s The Thing with its opening, but what makes it unique is its setting.  In this case the setting is a South London “block,” an inner-city housing project, whose tenants aren’t looking to befriend an extraterrestrial life form more than they are looking to beat the life out of it.

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