Attack the Block
Director: Joe Cornish
Writer:  Joe Cornish
Cast: John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Franz Drameh, Jodie Whittaker, Luke Treadaway, Nick Frost
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Moses (John Boyega), Pest (Alex Esmail), Dennis (Franz Drameh), Jerome (Leeon Jones) and Biggz (Simon Howard) live in an apartment building in a pretty crappy neighborhood in London and spend their time among other things with mugging people like Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a nurse who lives in the building as well. But the mugging is interrupted by something crashing into a car that is parked right next to them. That something turns out to be an alien that promptly attacks Moses. The boys kill it – but its really only the beginning of an invasion.

There’s been a lot of buzz surounding this movie and I’m happy to say that it is very well deserved buzz. It’s an intelligent, fun and very well made movie and was a great opening choice for the /slash Filmfestival.

I was really impressed by the cast, most of whom didn’t have any experience beforehand. They were really good, especially John Boyega and Alex Esmail really blew me away. Though it really helps that the script was good to them, too. Joe Cornish (who later told us in the Q&A that he did a lot of research and interviewed youngsters from that background) really gets them and makes it a point to get them. It was beautifully done how they not only literally but figuratively lose their masks and hoods during their film.

And that’s just one of the things that shows the intelligence involved in making this film. It’s nice to see that somebody approaches a genre film with that much respect and doesn’t forget that despite there being monsters, a movie can have other qualities, too.

That doesn’t mean that the movie can only be appreciated at an intellectual level because it’s a fantastic monster movie as well. The monsters themselves were pretty cool to look at (inspired by Cornish’s black cat), the pacing was fantastic and Joe Cornish (who is a pretty nice guy, judging from the Q&A) has an awesome sense of humor.

And to top it all off, the soundtrack – by Basement Jaxx and Steven Price – was great.

Summarising: perfect.