Joe Cornish’s feature debut starts out like a scene drawn from a realistic British drama about the life of troubled youth on the outskirts of London. Returning home late one night, nurse Sam is mugged by five adolescents on bikes, their faces covered with scarves. The terrified woman manages to escape when the ruffians are distracted by an unidentified object smashing through the roof of a nearby car. Investigating, the kids discover that the object moves, and they lay into the unknown creature, killing it and taking it as a trophy to place among their pot plants. At this point, the flick transforms into a politically incorrect ride through nighttime London as the characters cleverly crack wise and the metropolis is threatened by alien invaders. But only the gang is willing to oppose them.... The movie, which the British magazine Sight and Sound ranks alongside the cult films of John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13, Escape from New York, The Thing), excels for the spontaneous acting performances from all of its young actors (Luke Treadaway and Jodie Whittaker as well), and for the tricked out, electronically pulsating soundtrack that will leave you breathless.