The minute the monstrous beasts in the trailer for the film Attack the Block opened their jaws, revealing their neon green, glowing teeth surrounded by their pitch black bodies, I knew I was in for something special.
It then went on to spend its opening ten minutes telling me in bold, clear images that every major genre cliché was going to be ignored or toyed with in a very special way.
Its main leads are, after all, teenaged muggers who would be promptly devoured by any alien menace were they to be cast into Doctor Who. Here, not only do they survive, but the result of their first encounter with one of the featured aliens has the kids beat it to death and carry off its corpse as a trophy.
It proceeded to continue the fun from there.
And part of that fun, comes from the unique creature designs.
Symbolism of the Attacker
The beasts are never named in the film. Usually, they are just called “the Aliens” or “big gorilla wolf motherfuckers.” They speculate wildly about what the monsters could be. Moses, the leader of the gang, thinks at one point that they’re government made. “No, I reckon yeah, I reckon, the Feds sent them anyway. Government probably bred those things to kill black boys. First they sent in drugs, then they sent guns and now they’re sending monsters in to kill us. They don’t care man. We ain’t killing each other fast enough. So they decided to speed up the process.”
It’s a fun peak into a bleak world view. In truth, they’re just aliens (yeah, “just”). Their true symbolism isn’t keeping one group of people down. Instead, they are a modern incarnation of the Greek Furies. They are the consequences of actions taken in haste.
The boys kill the first monster to appear, and the other monsters spend the rest of the film hounding them—tracking the scent of the first monster on the boys. These boys have been living in the now most of their lives, not really thinking things through or understanding the full consequences of their actions. They sell weed to make money, they don’t really realize that other kids look up to them and try to be like them. They mug a woman at the start of the film and only regret it later not due to some epiphany that threatening a person is a bad thing to do. No, the wrong to them is that they mugged someone from the same block as they are. They were on a dark path to becoming just another set of statistics, but this divine intervention forces them to change their ways of thinking.
Well, they are from the heavens in some sense of the word.
Biology of the Attacker
The beasts travel from planet to planet in meteors. Males following the scent of the female once they get on the surface. Their method of travel and apparent breeding cycle brings to mind a quote from a British Sci-Fi author: Douglas Adams.
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Pretty much, compared to the vastness of space, such a breeding cycle and travel form for these creatures is ridiculously inefficient. How they even get into their traveling meteors is unexplained. With that as a base, it seems that even if they are alien, they are likely a form of bioweapon being used against earth.
An inefficient bioweapon, but a bio-weapon nonetheless.
Physically, these monsters are totally blind. They appear to rely on their sense of smell to track things long distance, and their constant noise making would also indicate that they are using echo location as well. They have a physiology designed for climbing, with sharp, hooked claws and strong musculatures to support it. They’re not spider-man, but definitely up there with Spider-monkeys, which for their mass and size is simply incredible.
One of the most interesting features about them I mentioned at the start of the article.
In the males are the blackest thing on a cinema screen and their teeth glow neon green. The darkness likely acts as camouflage while they hunt. The neon teeth would likely wise serve as a threat display to other animals, telling them how dangerous and powerful they are, or at the very least, shocking and disturbing any potential adversary.
The apparent breeding cycle has a female secreting pheromones to attract potential suitors who then compete to get as close to her as possible.
The seed for this is explicitly shown to the characters in a nature documentary and it is indeed used by insects and other animals as a mating strategy.
It’s likely that they’d form a breeding ball like what is done with green tree frogs.
Really not a pleasant thought with those monsters in play.
