It's Guy Fawkes Day in South London, fireworks are going off in the air, and a young nurse named Sam (Jodie Whittaker) is on her way home on the increasingly dangerous streets of South London. Suddenly a group of thugs appears before her, their heads hooded, their faces masked, She knows where this is going, and so do we. A knife comes out, a brief struggle over a ring, when suddenly something crashes into the car next to the group, giving Sam her chance to escape. Then the movie does a most surprising thing: it let's Sam go and stays with the thugs. They investigate the car and find more than they bargained for. Injured by this whatever-it-is, the gang's leader Moses (John Boyega), swears vengeance. The gang follows the thing as it seeks shelter in a shed, where they corner it, scare it with fireworks, and beat it to death. Moses and his crew know what they've got here, and they carry it back to their block (read "project") as a trophy, visions of wealth and fame taking shape in their heads. Big mistake, for you see that was just the first thing to fall from the sky that night.
First time writer/director Joe Cornish has fashioned an unusual, sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary, often inventive sci-fi horror comedy. Yet he's done something more: buried within this silly monster-a-thon is some very pointed social/racial commentary. It doesn't preach, however. You can easily glide along the surface of this one and have a good time, never noticing the meaning in its depths. We get glimpses into the lives of the protagonists, the thugs that mugged a woman at knife-point in the beginning, but the movie never really tries to make you sympathize with them, never creates excuses for their behaviour. The characters themselves sometimes try to make excuses, but the movie won't let them. And suddenly the find themselves pursued by some big, bad, black beasties. The creature design here is wonderful in that it's so hard to pin down. Roughly gorilla shaped with rows upon rows of luminescent teeth (first shown in a brilliant reveal), the monsters are covered in deep, inky black...something. It might be spiky fur, it might be scaly spikes. I can't tell. You even see them quite clearly and fully in bright light...but I still can't quite nail their form or texture. Other than the form and the teeth, their just like a void of blackness. "It's so black you can hardly see it," one of the characters says. Indeed. And don't think this blackness is just an element of good monster design. It's no accident that the thugs suddenly have to fear black things in the night.
I must make mention of an incredible performance from newcomer John Boyega. His Moses is stoic and quiet, but authoritative, with a sense that there is some rage brimming underneath that steadily calm exterior, and, surprising in such an ultimately unsympathetic character, a sense of nobility and bravery. It's easy to see him as a leader. All the rest of the cast is good as well, especially Whittaker (who we see again of course, a nurse soon becomes a valuable commodity), Luke Treadaway as a stoner/zoologist who happens to get caught up in the fray (and offers his opinions on what the creatures are and what their motives might be), and Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Paul) as the resident drug dealer. I must also mention the movie lost out on five stars only because there was so much London street jargon spoken in such thick accents that there were sometimes long stretches of dialogue I couldn't follow. Context helped sometimes, but not always. Subtitles might have helped more. Ultimately, though, the ride is lots fun, the characters and monsters are fascinating, the rise of its antihero is compelling, and its deeper messages and desire to make you look at yourself shine through if your looking for them, but don't overwhelm if your not. It comes at you like a beast in the night. As Moses would say, "Allow it."
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