Attack the Block

I recently got the opportunity to catch an advance screening of writer/director Joe Cornish's feature debut, Attack the Block. Produced and just recently released in England, this was the first major screening of it in America (besides the SXSW Festival thingy). So what do I have to report? Well, I am happy to tell you all that Attack the Block is the first strong contender for Jim's Movie of 2011.

The movie is basically Critters in the Hood (oh geez, pretend I didn't just say that). In all those Critters movies, alien puppet monsters come down from space or something and kill dumb teenagers. In Attack the Block, the aliens land in the poor, inner city part of London, and the teenagers they're hunting are stone cold hard-asses.

The film opens with a gang of 14-year-old boys mugging a lady at knifepoint. Their mugging is interrupted by a meteor falling from the sky and crashing through the roof of a car next to them. The lady runs away, and the Hoodies go to investigate. Their badass leader, Moses, gets attacked and clawed by the creature and decides to hunt it down. They track it, kill it, and parade it around town, proudly displaying their pelt to all the neighborhood kids. Holy shit! This is in the first 10 minutes!

Not long after, a second wave of meteorites come crashing down, this time way more than just the one. These aliens are bigger, meaner, and scarier than the first one, and appear to be out for vengeance on Our Gang. Other people get embroiled in the whole thing, the young woman they mugged, two wannabe gangsta 9-year-olds, the friendly drug dealers upstairs, and their not-so-friendly boss. Nearly all of the action takes place in or around their crowded, cramped tenement building.

I will spoil nothing else. There is, of course, a body count, including some characters you genuinely don't want to see die. There's some nice gore, but it's actually pretty tame. It's a light R here, but probably earned England's equivalent of PG-13 (I think they have a "15" rating there).

The characters were all very likeable. These kids are actually the age they're portraying (instead of the usual 25-year-olds we get over here), and are mostly minorities (instead of the mostly whites we would get over here). They all have distinct personalities, are funny (besides the stoic, tough-as-nails hero, Moses), and you genuinely sympathize with the state they live in. Yeah, they're little punks, but none of them have crossed that line yet that would make them irredeemable.

The effects are great in their simplicity. They went for practical effects and puppetry with the creatures, which takes away the disconnect from reality that we all accept when going into a CGI movie. It's so much easier to believe in fantasy when it looks like something you can actually touch.

I should also note how awesome the soundtrack is. It's all hip-hop, which I'm not too into or knowledgeable about, but I would probably buy this soundtrack if it comes out in America.

Before the movie started, we were told by a representative of the studio or distributor or something that Attack the Block doesn't have a U.S. release date yet, but it will soon. I'm guessing this fall, September or October, maybe. When it comes out, I want all of you to go see it and spread the word. Attack the Block deserves to find the largest audience possible.

UPDATE: Attack the Block opens in 7 major cities on July 29th. Go see it if you can!