Attack the Block

Attack the Block opens on a scene as prosaic as any social realist film, with a gang of hoodies (the kind of kids that give Daily Mail readers palpitations) robbing a fresh faced trainee nurse (Jodie Whittaker) at knife point. But any fears you’ve wandered into a Noel Clarke movie are undercut when a meteoroid, carrying the first of many vicious aliens, crashes the larceny.

It’s this collision of the familiar urban milieu with a malevolent brood of extraterrestrials with onyx fur and razor sharp fluorescent gnashers that brings the biggest laughs in comedian Joe Cornish’s first feature. But those expecting a knockabout invasion spoof will be disappointed. Like a high-octane John Carpenter film starring N-Dubz, Cornish has delivered a mean, lean siege movie where the modernist architecture of inner city London looks as alien as the invading creatures and the patois of the film’s hooded anti-heroes, led by brooding teen Moses (charismatic newcomer John Boyega), is as incomprehensible as Klingon. It’s a blistering debut. [Jamie Dunn]