Attack the Block

Director: Joe Cornish

2011 / 88min / DCP

John Boyega gives a star-making turn in Cornish’s feature debut as the leader of a mostly Black band of streetwise South London teenagers who team up with a NHS nurse (Jody Whittaker, soon to become Doctor Who’s 13th Doctor) to defend their ’hood from the encroaching threat of simian-like extraterrestrials who’ve begun an invasion inside their council estate building, as Guy Fawkes Day bonfires burn throughout the city under siege. A neon-splashed exercise in high style, by turns very funny and white-knuckle terrifying, with a sinister synth score courtesy Basement Jaxx and very impressive gore effects achieved on a shoestring budget.