By the time you get to the third act you realize the central thrust of BLOCK is that it uses an invading horde of sexually frustrated aliens as a metaphor for gang violence.
Pretty heady stuff for a film that’s ostensibly an hour and a half of teenagers running around an apartment complex bludgeoning misfit toys from the Jim Henson workshop.
BLOCK is fun, frothy and strangely not afraid of dispatching those same teens in a fairly graphic manner.
Oh, and if you think that there’s a world of difference between Brits and Canucks, despite our shared history and language, wait til you see the film’s portrayal of low income London. The thick accents and heavy use of slang really do make it seem otherworldly to all us folks hunkered down here in the colonies.
My only issue with this film is the fact that we are meant to get on side with the thug kids from the outset about 15 minutes in after they've proved themselves to be idiotic, bullyish asshat teens with no sense of right and wrong.
ReplyDeleteYes, the the time the 3rd act has rolled round we are much more onside with them and by the finale we CAN see Moses as the hero he should be....
But then they should have given us the girl or the college kid or even the drug dealer as the protagonist for the first half hour...because I felt wrong-footed being asked to side with them early on when I wanted to punch every last one of them in the face.
That's my only issue with it, otherwise a stellar movie and a really good look at life in low-income London, and a really unique monster/alien portrayal.