When a gang of hoodies are interrupted mid-mugging by an unknown animal falling from the sky, they respond by beating it to death.
Then the alien hordes arrive, and two things quickly become obvious: beating up random animals is a dick move; and that a south London council estate is not the best place to start an invasion!
The main problem I have with the movie is the cast. it's quite common for the core group in horror movies to be unlikeable and it's often a problem; if I don't care if a group of kids live or die, I find it hard to be scared for them. But even in the worst of those movies, we do not meet our "heroes" as five of them gang up to rob a woman at knife-point This movie did not suffer from my apathy towards the key players; I had no problem caring if they lived or died - I wanted the monsters to bite the little shits' heads off. Preferably in the first reel.
It's like someone watched 'Eden Lake' or 'Ils' or some-such saw the evil chav kids and thought - we should make them the good guys in our next movie!
The filmmakers made some attempt to show these poor misunderstood lads as victims of society, but that just pissed me off further. There are countless young people out there from these kinds of backgrounds who have got out and bettered themselves, and every time the media shows little bastards like these as 'victims' I think that it a) shits in the face of the real victims and b) gives the ones who don't want to bother to try and be better, some ill-deserved validation "it's not my fault innit? I'm a solid guy really, d'y'get me?"
Fuck.
Off.
But, I'm not here to make social commentary or criticise leftards, I'm here to review a monster movie; and on that level, this film is a roaring success!
The creatures themselves are fantastic - brilliantly simple, managing enough to be scary, but not so unstoppable that its unbelievable a bunch of kids armed with baseball bats and fireworks couldn't see off at least a few of them.
It was good that people's reaction to the kids didn't change all at once - no 'oh, you probably saved me just, so I'm now completely cool with that time you attacked me in an alley' for this movie!
Setting the invasion on bonfire night was a stroke of genius, as the aliens arrive one at a time in a streak of blue fire that could easily vanish into a sky full of fireworks.
All in all, if you can get over the 'routing for hateful little shits' thing, I'm going to go ahead and recommend this one.
Despite my comments in my review of 'The Blob' it seems film makers ARE still allowed to make fun monster movies. But probably not from Hollywood.
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