Joe Cornish’s sci-fi-action-thriller takes a simple premise (hoodie thugs versus aliens in a London tower block) and complicates it by giving us a messy array of characters to contend with. We’re introduced to the gang at their most brutal and uncaring – teaming up to rob a sympathetic nurse (played by future Doctor Who, Jodie Whitaker). And their behaviour when they first meet an alien is to beat the everloving snot out of it. But once more aliens show up and they’re outnumbered and running from the monsters, we start to get a sense that maybe there’s more to these kids than just the brutal facades.
It probably helps here that the main kid, Moses, is played by John Boyega, who’s since showed his immense charisma in Star Wars, and here gets to slowly peel back the layers of a largely silent kid til we get to see what's going on inside him. And it helps that lets the aliens be genuinely menacing – in some ways, they’re not the most obviously scary creature design (they’re basically shaggy gorilla suits with glowing eyes and teeth – looking something like the creatures on the side of an old “Space Invaders” machine) but they’re effective and brutal. But it’s Cornish’s direction, that balances the terror, the action, the comedy and the heart, that makes this really work – it’s a highly successful thrill ride that has just that little bit extra to take it over the edge.
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