'Attack the Block'

You have to listen very closely to what is being said in the tight little alien invasion film Attack the Block. This level of attention is necessary, not only to understand the gnarled English being spoken by the film's characters, but also to understand the unspoken sub-currents that swirl beneath the action. The film is set in a bleak bit of Southeast London, but it could easily take place in South Central L.A. or any other downtrodden urban centre where young men and women with few economic prospects and little sense of investment recreate the Hobbesian truth about life being "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

The basic premise of Attack the Block is an alien invasion that begins, fittingly enough, on Guy Fawkes Night in London. Fireworks, loutishness and wild rumpus rule the city streets. The film, which premiered last spring at the SXSW Festival, eerily preceded the London riots, but the same level of simmering rage that ignited London moves through the film like a petrol vapour, simply waiting for the right match to be lit. In such an atmosphere, even the stars themselves pose a threat. When one such celestial body detaches itself from the spangled expanse of the night sky, and shoots toward earth, making a wish isn't the best idea. It's probably a better idea to duck for cover. On a darkened street, when a young nurse is mugged by a gang of teenage toughs, the incident is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a fanged alien, who crash lands into a nearby parked car.

This newcomer has the cosmic bad luck to encounter some bad boys on bad night. They take their boots to the creature, and then drag their dead smelly trophy back to the block, an enormous council estate with the unlikely name of Wyndham Tower. And so begins a turf war quite unlike any other, only this time the would-be trespassers are big, black, fanged and intergalactic. Described somewhat later as an example of what would happen were a monkey to have intimate relations with a fish, the creatures' behaviour is likened to other invasive species. Like insects or Asian carp, they float through space, borne along by interstellar currents, until a ripe and an unsuspecting planet appears in their path. Like other organisms of a similar nature, they're drawn by the presence of pheromones secreted by the female of the species. This process is given voice by the film's token white nerd boy, who somewhat sheepishly admits that he studied "zoology at uni."

All that stand in the way

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before the males of this new species turn up with sex and murder on their minds, seeking to take over the earth turf, the film also takes the time to give faces, names, and identities to the multi-ethnic gang of would-be thugger-muggers, who are the only people standing in the way of an intergalactic invasion. Indeed, they are the only ones who actually know it's happening. This is the real business of the film, to take what is at first a nameless, faceless mob, reveal their essential humanity, and pave the way for genuine heroism.

Our saviours, are Sam the nurse; Pest, a young man who more than lives up to his name; the dutiful Jerome; Brewis, the aforementioned white nerd; and the eponymous Ron of Ron's Weed Room, a dope-growing dropout played by Nick Frost, familiar from Shaun of the Dead. The boys, since that is largely what they are, are led by a young man named Moses (the very impressive John Boyega). Barely out of short pants, these kids are still at the cell phone beck and call of their mothers, with the exception of the taciturn Moses, whose level of self-possession is revealed later as a necessary means of self-preservation. This motley crew must battle an alien invasion force, with machetes, squirt guns, knives and clubs. The only actual gun in evidence belongs to the Block's resident gangster, a dandified nasty with the charming moniker of Hi-Hatz.

As the film gallops along, swinging from one confrontation to another, the apartment block itself plays a central role. Dim hallways, elevators and tiny flats make an ideal setting for the bait and stalk action. But in the midst of the teeth and claws, a genuine emotional drama about the nature of responsibility, and the consequences of action unfolds.

Fangs for thinking of me

Kudos to the extremely clever writer-director Joe Cornish, who understands that the only way that action/horror films have an impact is when the audience is made to feel something for the people getting obliterated on screen. In this, Mr. Cornish has obviously studied at the feet of the genre masters. The references in Attack the Block to John Carpenter's oeuvre are evident from the opening synthesizer tones that run over the film's opening credits. But the film also recalls the same quality that characterized Carpenter at his finest. In films like The Thing or Halloween, the events onscreen reverberated because people cared if Jamie Lee Curtis got hacked up, or Kurt Russell was morphed into an alien shape shifter.

It seems like such a simple thing, but so many contemporary horror films lack even the most basic level of empathy. The viewer simply doesn't care who does or doesn't die. Thankfully, Mr. Cornish understands that good old-fashioned empathy still has a place in film. As Moses moves over the course of the film from stone-faced thug to someone who understands and accepts personal responsibility, his transformation into a genuine leader is well earned and wonderfully rewarding.

Other old-school touches abound. The tar-black aliens are given impressive life by an actual actor, namely Terry Notary, who similarly brought simian mannerisms to an art form in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Time is also taken to establish character in a bevy of smaller scenes. In this aspect, Attack the Block reminded me of another of my very favourite films, Bong Joon-ho's The Host, a film in which a monstrous force meets its match in a bunch of common folk.

Politics with bite

The political undercurrents that move through The Host, rising up to bite hard upon occasion, are also on display in Attack the Block. The premise of an alien invasion as a means to address the class, race and economic divisions that mark English society, is clever, but it again recalls Mr. Carpenter, specifically his 1988 opus They Live, a film that also uses the premise of an alien invasion to take a good hard poke at consumerism, mass media, and oligarchy. They Live has been taken up by a remarkable number of artists, everyone from filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to author Jonathan Lethem, who uses the film as the impetus for an entire work of long-form film criticism. In Lethem's words, They Live "is probably the stupidest film ever to take ideology as its explicit subject. It's also probably the most fun."

Instead of the magic sunglasses in They Live that reveal the naked working of power and control, Attack the Block uses language to uncover the ugly truth behind society's veneer. Even the midst of watching bloody mayhem, people getting their faces chewed off, I kept hearing the dulcet tones of Rex Harrison. Suffice to say, Henry Higgins would have his work cut out for him with these boys. Like so many little Eliza Doolittles turned gangster thugs, their language defines their "verbal class distinction," and thus their scope of possibilities. But it does a good deal more than that. It is the means of creating identity, of strengthening social bonds, of staking out common ground.

In projects, favelas, and housing councils around the globe, youngsters are busily fashioning new forms of language. Indigenous and global mixes have taken root and flowered into massive bushy hedges of undergrowth, spiked here and there with recognizable phrases. It's a gumbo of language, bits of Cockney pop up, a West Indian influence is evident, as is the piquancy of American rap and hip-hop, all mixed up into a spicy stew of patois. It's glorious. Attack the Block is packed with juicy bits of tasty language. To wit: "I'm shittin' meself, innit, bruv? 'Nat same time -- dis is sick!" "I'm killin' em, I'm killin' straight!" "Get that snitch, get the strap, don't give a fuck, BRAP BRAP BRAP!!" Written down, it doesn't have quite the same effect, but "Believe, Bruv!" it does scissor kicks on screen. In the film's final scene, when the call for a hero to rise rings out loud and clear, it's fitting that they're calling for Moses.