Plot
On Guy Fawkes Night, trainee nurse Samantha Adams is mugged and violently attacked by a gang of teenage hoodlums from South London: Pest, Dennis, Jerome, Biggz and leader Moses. When a meteorite falls from the sky into a nearby car, Samantha escapes. As Moses searches the wreck of the car for valuables, his face is scratched by a dog-sized alien creature. The creature runs away, but the gang chase and kill it. Hoping to gain fame and fortune, they take the dead animal to their acquaintance, cannabis dealer Ron and his boss Hi-Hatz, a local gang leader, who instead recruits Moses to work for him.
More objects fall from the sky. The gang arm themselves and go after them, however, these aliens are much larger and more threatening. After one kills Dennis's pet pitbull Pogo, the gang flee but are intercepted by two policemen accompanying Samantha, and Moses is arrested. The aliens kill the officers, Samantha and Moses escape. A henchman of local drug lord Hi-Hatz is killed by aliens. The gang try to flee and Biggz hides in a recycling bin, though he is later saved by a pair of their young neighbours who manage to kill the alien. An alien bursts into Samantha's flat and Moses kills it with a samurai sword, so she joins them.
The gang move upstairs to the flat where Tia, Dimples, Dionna and Gloria live, but two aliens attack from outside, smashing through the windows and decapitating Dennis. Samantha kills an alien, saving Moses in the process, while Tia and Dimples manage to kill the other one. The girls believe the boys to be the focus of the creatures and kick them out of the flat. Hi-Hatz and two more henchmen arrive to attack the gang, but are attacked by aliens; only Hi-Hatz makes it out alive.
The gang run into more aliens, but use fireworks as a distraction, Jerome becomes disorientated in the smoke and is killed by an alien. Entering Ron's flat, they find Hi-Hatz waiting, who prepares to shoot Moses but he is then suddenly attacked and killed by the rest of the aliens who break in through the window. The group flee and are joined by Brewis, one of Ron's customers and a zoology student. Moses, Pest and Samantha retreat into the weed room, while Ron hides in the flat.
In the weed room, Brewis notices a luminescent stain on Moses's jacket under the ultraviolet light. Brewis theorises that the aliens are like spores, drifting through space on solar winds until they chance on a habitable planet; after landing in an area with enough food, the female lets off a strong pheromone to attract the male creatures so that they can mate and propagate their species; Moses has been carrying scent since he killed the female, which is how the males have always been able to find them. Moses persuades Pest to return Samantha's stolen ring and together they form a plan. As Samantha has not been stained with the alien pheromone she can go to Moses's flat and turn on the gas oven.
Samantha successfully bypasses the aliens and turns on the gas in the flat. She leaves the tower block, and Moses, with the corpse of the small female alien strapped to his back, runs to the gas-filled flat with all of the big male aliens following him. He throws the corpse into the flat; with a firework he ignites the room and leaps out of the window. The resulting explosion kills all the aliens but leaves the high-rise flat in flames. Moses survives by grabbing onto a flag hanging from the balcony.
A crowd of residents from the block congregate outside after the explosion including Tia and Dimples. Moses, Pest, Brewis and Ron are arrested as the police believe they are responsible for all the deaths that have happened. The police question Samantha and ask her to say Moses and the gang are responsible for all the mayhem, but she tells them they are her neighbors and they protected her, showing her respect for Moses.
Biggz shows up within the crowd, telling the cops Moses saved the block. He then gets everyone to begin triumphantly chanting Moses' name. As Moses and Pest sit in the back of a police van, Pest tells Moses that chanting is for him, and they both smile.
Production
Big Talk Pictures, known for films including Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, produced the film alongside Film4, The UK Film Council and StudioCanal.
The plot was inspired by an event where the director was mugged himself, and after adding the science fiction angle into the plot, Joe Cornish interviewed various kids in youth groups in order to find out what kind of weapons they would use if a real alien invasion occurred. The director wanted to counter the trend of 'hoodie horror' films which demonised urban youths. Cornish also based the character of the stoner Brewis on himself in his twenties.
Filming
Attack the Block is set in a fictional neighbourhood said in-film to be located in the Stockwell district of London. It is actually a composite of various council estates across London. Director Cornish explains:
We wanted to stamp a clear layout on the audience's minds early on, and since we couldn't show an aerial shot of the estate as it doesn't exist, the way to show it was by showing this top shot of the map at the very beginning of the film.
The name Wyndham Tower appears on the left of the entrance to the fictional tower block, referencing the English science-fiction writer John Wyndham, author of the 1953 novel, 'The Kraken Wakes' , which similarly begins with aliens invading Earth from outer space, as well as other science-fiction monster works such as 'The Day of the Triffids'. Other buildings in the estate are named for J. G. Ballard, author of a number of novels set in large urban tower blocks, including High-Rise where mayhem breaks out in a high-rise London apartment block, and famous science fiction authors H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Douglas Adams.
The film was shot across London from March to May 2010, with six weeks of night shoots on the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle; Myatts Field, Brixton; Oval Underground station and the Bemerton Estate in Islington. Interior scenes were filmed at Three Mills Studios in Newham, part of the East End of London.
Creature effects
The creatures began with two men in gorilla-like suits with animatronic jaws; post-production added the unearthly qualities such as the spiky fur which doesn't reflect any light, the claws, the rows of bioluminescent jaws, and even some of their movement. In total the film features over 100 effects shots, which were completed over the course of four months by Swedish effects house Fido. The creatures have no eyes, navigating their environments by echolocation and using a highly developed sense of smell to hunt and find mates. According to the DVD commentary, the echolocation noises made by the creatures were a combination of dolphin sonar mixed digitally with the grunts and snarls of dozens of other animals, and even a woman screaming. Some puppets were used, such as the smaller, hairless female alien which terrified the young cast. In 2023, Cornish stated the creature designs were partly based on his pet cat who "engulfs darkness".
Reception
Box office
On its opening theatrical weekend in the United Kingdom in May 2011, Attack the Block took £1,133,859, putting it in third place only slightly behind American blockbusters Thor and Fast Five. On a screen-by-screen basis, Attack the Block was the week's strongest performer. In North America, the film's theatrical run began in July 2011 and was a box office flop despite receiving overall good reviews. In limited release for less than two months with 66 cinemas at its peak, it managed to gross US$1,024,175 in North America.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 183 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Effortlessly mixing scares, laughs, and social commentary, Attack the Block is a thrilling, briskly-paced sci-fi yarn with a distinctly British flavor." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The website Slash film lists Attack the Block as a "true cult classic" deserving of its own action figures. In his review, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert praised the film's use of character development and the performance given by Boyega. Scott Wampler of The Examiner rated it A+ and said it was officially the best film of the 2011 film festival season and likened it to other debuts such as Neill Blomkamp's District 9 and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Matt Patches writing for Cinemablend said "Attack the Block, even on its small scale, may wind up as one of the best action movies of the year". Christ Tilly at IGN gave it four stars saying "Cornish directs with the confidence of a seasoned pro" and calling the film "a blast from start-to-finish." Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy awarded the movie four stars, saying that it is "exactly the kind of distinctly homegrown product that the British film industry should be making". Mark Kermode gave a mixed review saying he did not dislike the film, but "wanted it to be funnier" and "needed it to be scarier".
Attack the Block was revisited by critics following the casting of its two lead actors as stars of flagship science fiction franchises – Boyega as Finn in Star Wars and Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who. In a 2017 retrospective, Tom Philip writing for GQ described the film as "one of the most confidently-delivered debut feature films in recent memory" and said it "still stands out as one of the best genre-mashup films of the decade", while Nathan Rabin for Rotten Tomatoes said that the film deserved cult status and called it "a star-making vehicle in the truest sense". It was listed among Wired Magazine's best films of the 2010s.
