Bikes ahoy!You might know Joe Cornish as part of Adam and Joe. You might not. What's clear when you see Attack the Block is that Cornish is emerging from the shadow of close pal and collaborator Edgar Wright.
Wright acts as one of a cabal of Executive Producers on Block and while there have been comparisons to the films of John Carpenter and Shaun of the Dead this is no cut-and-paste job.
The premise is simple and fantastic. Alien spaceship crashes while kids mug a nurse. Kids kick the crap out of alien. More aliens turn up. Kids and aliens kick the crap out of each other in equal measure. Throw in some astute social commentary, dark humour and a bit of gore and you've got a film, boi!
The trailer made Block look like a laugh-a-minute comedy but the finished work shows an ambitious use of light as the gang of five use their home-turf advantage to take it to the invaders.
The gang, led by a superb John Boyega (who is sure to see his twitter followers multiply), give the film its emotional core. Cornish spent time with a group of teens to make sure he got the slang perfect, to show the boredom that leads to posturing and mugging. The kids love the block, does the block love them? Cornish uses the rare moments when the boys connect outside of their own world to show how they're really disconnected from everything.
There have been a few murmurings about the slang being irritating but while it grates for the first few minutes, it comes to feel right. This is how a lot of teenagers speak today. Seeing as a lot of teens go to the cinema because they can't go to a pub or club, why alienate them from there. You're a bit of a snob if you decide these kids are punks who can't talk properly.
The characters make this film, from Pest with his rudeboi schtick to the smaller kids who want to be part of the gang but can only bring a cap gun and a super-soaker to proceedings - "Water ain't no good against dem tings" - "It ain't water..." Props indeed. Boyega's Moses is the root of the film's appeal as he realises that with great power - or lack of therein - comes great responsibility.
There's your token moron hipster who hangs around in places that would shock his trust-fund parents who eventually proves he's more than a haircut. Jodie Whittaker is quite sweary as the mugging victim who has to help her attackers - "You got a potty mouth love." You understand her attitude to the kids at the beginning and her interpretation of the culture - "So it would have been alright to mug me if I didn't live here?!" - and we soften as she does. If you want a social barometer, you got it.
The use of darkness (or the lack of light) is the key to Block's success, in fact, the monsters resemble something from Abe's Oddysee or Heart of Darkness on the PSone eons ago. The constant on-off of Wyndham Court's lights gives off that Carpenter impression. Hopeless against a superior enemy, the survivors use their knowledge of the territory to their advantage.
Whether police (or feds, even) getting mauled by gorilla-dog-aliens is more shocking than the initial violence in Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 is a moot point. These kids don't have guns or a bike gang swarming around to get them. They are the bike gang. They've got fireworks, kitchen knives and baseball bats against fluorescent blue fangs. They don't stand a chance. But that's what makes Block half the fun it is.
The film even has a more satisfying conclusion than Shaun of the Dead or Precinct, although quite how you expect Shaun and friends to defeat the zombie apocalypse without the army's help is a debate for the pub. The gang solve their own problems because, in this world, who else will do it for them?
The stand-out sequence involves a smoke-filled corridor, light dimmed by the swirling suffocation and the loss of comrades in front. Absolutely bloody terrifying. Cornish shows you don't need naff, jumpy music to cause a scare - the score is superb - it's all achieved through clever cinematography, atmosphere and great acting.
It sounds straight-forward but there are enough schlock-horror films these days it's a wonder films like Block get made at all. Another triumph for the now-departed UK Film Council following The King's Speech and several others - it's abolition is nothing short of a national disgrace - sees Cornish enter the new Brit school of film-makers with Wright and Matthew Vaughn.
So can you finally make Ant-Man now, Joe?
