Writer: Ezekiel Lee Zhiang Yang

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Watch this if you liked: “Kablooey”, “Skyline”, “The Goonies”, “Gremlins”

While the rest of the waking world have turned up in droves to put even more money into Spielberg and Bay pockets, might we suggest a different but equally enjoyable intergalactic battle at the cinemas this season - "Attack The Block"!

Doing precisely what it says on the tin, "Attack The Block: Gangsters vs. Aliens" is "Gremlins"-meet-"Goonies" and we follow a gang of rowdy South London teens whose ordinary rowdy lives are changed overnight with the advent of an outrageous alien attack on their council flats, following what they thought was a meteor shower on Guy Fawkes Day.

Aside from the committed largely teenage cast, the real stars of the show - impossibly black, wolf-like critters (that one of the characters joked were "even blacker than my cousin Femi") - manage to hit that editing ambiguity where the creatures appear believably menacing enough without expensive SFX work.

What really elevates this from a pet project to an impressive, well-thought debut feature from frequent Edgar Wright collaborator Joe Cornish (the duo are behind the screenplay for Spielberg's upcoming "Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn") is the prevalent humour in the movie and how the audience can find it easy to relate to the simple and readily identifiable characters, save maybe their difficult London accents that may alienate the untrained ear of audiences in this region (or even maybe American viewers, as evident in some reports recently about worried U.S. distributors).

Nevertheless, "Attack The Block: Gangsters vs. Aliens" is a refreshing and welcome addition to the saturated monster movies we have come to expect from the market out there. Thank goodness it secured late release on these shores - better late than never!


Cinema Online, 08 July 2011