Attack The Block

 The fifth of November is Bonfire night here in the UK. It's sort of like the fourth of July in the States in that it's basically an excuse to launch fireworks all over the place, but instead of commemorating something momentous it's a sort of monument to the saddest, most ineffective mainstream terrorist this side of the four lions and his failure to kill some king.

 Against this backdrop that a few flares come down from the sky at high speeds. They're not fireworks, but meteorites carrying a highly lethal species. Unfortunately for these invaders, they happen to land in one of the rougher areas of Lambeth in southern London.

 How rough? Well, that's quickly illustrated when Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a young nurse on her way home is mugged at knife point by five young thugs. It's a legitimately scary scene - one that's instantly relatable in the way it conveys both the rush of fear and the impotent rage that follows these sort of events evoke.

 The mugging is interrupted by one of the meteorites falling nearby; Sam escapes, and the gang goes to investigate... and at around that point (if you haven't seen any of the trailers) you realize that holy shit, those five kids are the protagonists.

 Moses (John Boyega, in his film debut) leads, a laconic, no-nonsense would-be career gang member. Pest (Alex Esmail)  is the most vocal of the lot in the funny asshat role, and the group is rounded out by Franz Drameh , Leon Jones and Simon Howard. Most of them were closer to twenty than the fifteen or so they portray here, but they pull it off well. When not terrorizing innocent, underpaid nurses, they happen to be a charming bunch of hooligans. Just Kids. And the script sensitively drums up empathy for them without making any excuses for their behaviour. There's so much value in that.

 Anyhow! The gang manages to kill the alien the meteorite disgorged, but it turns out to be just the spearhead of the invasion - and a smaller version than the soldier types to follow. Once more meteorites land, unleashing their deadly passengers, the kids go on the hunt to see if they can bag more prey... only to find themselves running for their life, eventually falling back on their council estate. A thin, brutalist building, the Block in the title. There they join forces with Sam, who understandably isn't impressed, a chill drug dealer (Nick Frost), and a posh university student (Luke Treadaway) who provides a lot of cluelessness-based comic mileage.

 Oh, and they also piss off the block's resident gangsta, who's out for their blood as doggedly as the big alien gorilla wolf motherfuckers (as one of the kids christens the aliens).

 This is one of those movies that's an absolute joy from beginning to end - no missteps, no notes, nothing bad to say about it whatsoever. Writer/director Joe Cornish's direction and script are incredibly assured. He manages to pack in so much cleverness into a tightly-paced siege story and works so well with his actors that it's hard to believe most of his experience came from sketch comedy (he's the titular Joe in Adam & Joe).

 It's a movie I've watched several times over the years, and there's always a new detail to find. For example: This time I noticed that Pest fakes a leg injury to sneak an aluminium bat out of his house hidden in his trouser leg. Guess who (and this is a slight spoiler) gets a chunk of the same leg bitten off later, and spends the rest of the movie barely mobile? That's some next-level scriptwriting, especially when it reinforces the themes of consequence woven throughout the story. Man, to think we could have had an Ant-Man written by this guy.

 The action is good, the jokes are great, and the social commentary is, going by all the people who got put off by its choice of protagonists, sharp and still very topical. I've met fairly film-literate people who hated it because of that over the years. One of them turned it off, disgusted, half-way; His favorite movie? Scarface. I still find that funny.
 Beyond that, the writing's strong enough - and it trusts us enough - that it can play a scene where Moses is promoted to drug runner as a straight-faced triumph, with the rest of the gang sincerely, innocently happy for him. Oof.

 Effects are excellent for its budget, with the monsters (which started as gorilla suits!) feeling menacing and original; They look uncannily like something out of a '90s Image comics title. They're a believable threat and animate well, which is important as the more elaborate sequences consist of different types of chases. Things get a little brutal, especially for one (thoroughly deserved) gory death that lets the FX crew get all Romero and shit. The soundtrack is a glitchy wonder that has Basement Jaxx plus Steven Price playing with '50s scifi touches, Carpenter-style synths and more standard grand adventure film music.
 Yeah, this film's got everything.

 Sadly, Attack the Block failed to catch the public's attention in the same way that his mate Edgar Wright (who's an executive producer here) did with Sean of The Dead. Cornish's only done one kid's movie since, apart from some scripts and TV.
 Hopefully that will change soon; There's a sequel in the works, under the Netflix aegis, but let's not hold that against it. What is worrying is that it's gone a bit quiet lately, which is never a good sign, but we'll see. As the box office for Terrifier 3 showed us this week, sometimes the world works as it should.