Dir. Joe Cornish, UK, 2011, 88 mins
Cast: John Boyega, Nick Frost, Jodie Whittaker
Review by Carol Allen
Writer/director Cornish has acquired a loyal and enthusiastic fan base as half of television’s Adam and Joe Show duo and latterly from his Saturday morning radio show on BBC 6music. This comedy horror film, which is his feature film debut, is at times sadistic, oddly likeable, definitely trashy and great fun.
The story concerns an ethnically assorted group of teenagers, led my Moses (Boyega), who battle to defend themselves and their neighbours against invading killer aliens in a tower block on a grotty South London council estate, which is their territory.
Cornish has made a brave choice in making his heroes initially a menacing gang of thugs, who alienate the audience from the very beginning by mugging a young nurse Sam (Whittaker) on her way home. He then manages the difficult task of turning ours and indeed Sam’s sympathies round, as we start rooting for them in their battle against the aliens. Cornish then made another brave choice in casting totally unknown and inexperienced actors from youth clubs and such to play the boys. And it has worked. The boys all give natural and well differentiated performance with Boyega in particular demonstrating an impressive instinctive talent. As summed up in an ironic remark by Ron (Nick Frost), who works for the very nasty local drugs baron: “They’re quite sweet really, aren’t they?”
The young actors get good support from the professional actors in the cast – Frost, Whittaker, and Luke Treadaway as a nerdy white youth, who latches onto the gang in a desperate effort to be perceived as cool. The dialogue is lively and authentic sounding, albeit appropriately challenged in the vocabulary department, and is often very funny. The rather obviously low budget aliens themselves, which the director wisely never allows us to see too clearly, still make you jump a bit, even if they are somewhat reminiscent of scary versions of the cuddly Monsters Inc but with luminous teeth.
Teens and twenties audiences, particularly boys, will, I suspect, love this film with its fashionable mixture of blood and violence with comedy and its unusual heroes, all elements which would appear to connect with some of the obsessions of today’s youth culture. But even if you’re past that first flush, if you have the stomach for it, the film also has considerable appeal for those of us who are no longer in the “youth” category. New kid on the movie block Joe Cornish is a talent to watch.
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