Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 90% (Critics) 74% (Audience)
Directed By: Joe Cornish
Written By: Joe Cornish
Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker and Alex Esmail
Studio: Screen Gems

Synopsis: ATTACK THE BLOCK is an “aliens attack” movie with a twist. In the movie a teenage gang does battle with an army of alien monsters in their London housing estate. The gang is forced to team up with their most recent mugging victim in order to survive the alien attack and protect their turf.

This is a fun movie. The concept is cool as hell and has the same type of vibe as SHAUN OF THE DEAD (doesn’t hurt that it is produced by the same studio that did SHAUN and co-stars Nick Frost). The design of the aliens is pretty inventive too. The male aliens are some sort of bear-monkey-wolf-dog things with pitch black fur, no eyes and huge glowing green teeth. The female of the species are these smaller, almost hairless white monkey looking things. When the male aliens die their teeth stop glowing which was a nice touch. The overall look of the males (and the movie features them the majority of the time) is pretty cool and is pretty inventive for a movie that doesn’t really have that big of a budget. The effects work pretty well too especially given financial constraints. The cast is made up mostly of teenage actors and all of them are really good. The standouts being John Boyega (who plays the gang leader Moses) and Alex Esmail (who plays the very talkative Pest). I also enjoyed Jumayne Hunter as Hi-Hatz, the maniacal weed dealer who was more interested in hunting down Moses and his crew for perceived slights than he was with fighting the invading alien hordes.

The soundtrack for this movie is pretty tight too. The instrumental score coupled with the dubstep/house music stuff makes this one of the more eclectic soundtracks I have heard in a while. Good stuff.

Final Verdict: ATTACK THE BLOCK is one of my favorite movies I have seen this summer (and I have seen a ridiculous number of movies this summer) and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi action with a decent amount of humor thrown in. B+