I finally watched Attack the Block, John Boyega’s film debut from 2011 about kids from a South London housing project who become the world’s first line of defense against an alien invasion. It has a very 1980s feel, like those movies from your childhood that made you wish your friends could have thrilling adventures.
It’s a nearly perfect movie, in my opinion, and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it1 before reading any further. If you want to brave the article below, the spoilers are pretty mild and vague.
What makes this movie so great? Here are seven takeaways:
1. There are Enough Villains to Go Around
Our heroes in this movie are outrunning, outgunning, and outwitting three major opponents: the aliens, the police, and Hi-Hatz (the drug boss of the Block). A lot of stories have just one antagonist, or a main antagonist and his henchmen, but having multiple, separate antagonists makes for a richer story with more opportunities for tension and surprise.
For example, a common pitfall in thrillers is that any time things get a little quiet, the audience knows the bad guy is about to pop out from behind a corner. Having multiple villains allows for more surprise – when we think the kids are about to get jumped by the aliens, it turns out to be the cops, etc.
It also creates richer conflicts. There are several scenes in which the kids are being detained by one villain (the police or Hi-Hatz), only for that detainment to make them vulnerable to an even bigger threat (the aliens). It makes their predicament feel that much more impossible as they become boxed in from threats on all sides.
Having multiple, unrelated villains risks making a story feel unfocused but it works in Attack the Block because (a) there’s a logical (and connected) reason why each villain is after our heroes, and (b) there’s a clear pecking order between them, with the aliens being the scariest, the cops being the least scary, and Hi-Hatz being somewhere in the middle.
It’s also worth noting that characters in this movie only die at the “hand” of aliens, never by police or Hi-Hatz. I think that’s important because it keeps the aliens as the “Final Boss” the kids will have the hardest time escaping or defeating. It would muddy the story if characters also died from other causes.
2. The Kills Matter (or At Least Some of Them Do)
This is an action-adventure-monster movie, so there are several kills to let us know the aliens mean business.
These kids open the movie by mugging an innocent person, but as the film goes on, we realize how young they are and how they look out for each other even in the face of grave danger, and they each get at least one brief moment to show some vulnerability or generosity. They’re also pretty funny.
We grow to care about these kids, so we genuinely worry about them, and when a few of them die, the loss is sincerely felt. (And luckily most of the kills are characters we aren’t invested in, so it’s not overly depressing).
3. Everything Gets Called Back
Some call it Chekhov’s gun. In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder calls it “the six things that need fixing.” Whatever you want to call it, this movie has it. Problems and opportunities set up in early parts of the movie are paid off later.
When Biggz brags early in the movie that he can jump from one flight of stairs to another and his friends doubt him, you can be sure that later he will need to do just that to escape the aliens. When we learn that Brewis took a zoology course in college, you can bet that information will come in handy by Act Three. When we see inside every kid’s apartment except for Moses’s, the movie is setting us up for an emotional payoff later when we finally catch a glimpse.
I could go on with a dozen more examples. Some of these setups and payoffs are small and some are huge; some are predictable and some are surprising, but they all make for a more cohesive, satisfying movie.
4. It Takes Place in a Specific, Fully Realized World
The entire film takes place inside – or just outside – a giant South London housing project they call “the Block.” At the beginning of the movie, we learn everything we need to know about this location: (1) all of our characters live there, except for Brewis and Ron, (2) the elevator is very slow, (3) there is a complicated series of outdoor stairwells, and (4) Ron’s weed room is on the 19th floor and is locked down “like Fort Knox.”
There are almost no other locations in this movie – a brief scene or two in a park across the street and a couple of scenes in the alley outside the building, but otherwise everything takes place inside the Block.
Obviously it’s not necessary for good storytelling to restrict your locations, but sometimes limited locations can actually make a story feel richer instead of thinner because we feel fully immersed in the world. We see a hallway and we recognize it like we’ve been there before ourselves. We know to say, “no, no, don’t go in the elevator” because we know how slow it is.
This movie has a lot of similarities to another near-perfect film2, Die Hard, which makes similar use of a single location.
5. The Protagonist is Not “Nice,” But He Is Redeemed
John Boyega’s Moses is one of the most empathetic heroes I’ve come across in awhile, which is impressive given that he opens the movie by viciously mugging a defenseless woman. Part of that empathy comes from the actor’s innate charm, but it’s also built into the text.
First, Moses is trusted and beloved by his crew, which gives him some cred with us right away. There must be a reason these kids follow and trust him, so we extend him some faith.
Second, he’s good at things. We see his bravery and leadership immediately.
Third, we see glimpses of his vulnerability at multiple points, driven home to emotional effect in the final act when we learn three simple facts that crack open that sliver of empathy into a heartbreaking chasm. These points are not overplayed to saccharine effect but merely presented, allowed to breathe for the merest moment, and then left behind.
Last, and most importantly, he’s allowed a small but powerful character arc as he realizes the effects of his actions and chooses to risk his own life to make amends. It’s not a grand, sweeping change in his outer life, but it’s clearly a powerful shift in his inner life. We believe it, and we care.
6. There’s a Larger Point
This point isn’t belabored, but there are several moments throughout the film that address police brutality against black boys. The movie isn’t “about” that – it’s about a violent alien invasion – but it’s a theme that courses through the veins of the story, and by the end it has made a subtle but important point. Attack the Block is a fun, silly, exciting action-adventure movie, but the story is deepened by the broader point it is subtly but powerfully making.
7. There’s a Clever Explanation
Sometimes invasion movies like this end with the heroes blasting away each monster one by one until they’re all gone, or perhaps the old “round ’em up in a central place and then torch it” approach. These are both fine, but what elevates the story here is a twist – the characters figure out what’s driving the aliens and then use that knowledge in a clever way to outsmart them. The clues were there all along and it’s a surprising character who manages to put them together. The final moments of the film are like a heist story as we slowly piece together the plan the characters have devised and realize just how crazy – and brave – it actually is.
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