Going to the Pictures (IX) - Attraction

Seeing as googull has changed its dynamics, web crawlers and introduced Fred, I’ll be doing my film reviews separately from now on. I know you’re overjoyed, so let’s get on with last week’s movie.

Attraction (23rd January 2018)

This Russian film was certainly a welcome change of pace; the characters kept you guessing, the plot was a worthy one, and although sometimes something must have been lost in translation, it had its own sense of humour too. The lead, a nearly-twenty year old woman with a so-so boyfriend and a dad in the military, is interesting to watch and a refreshing change from the usual female leads. The boyfriend has a really good character arc, even if it does slip into trope territory from time to time, and the side characters (including the high school teacher and his apparently oblivious students) are also well written.

I loved the design of the spaceship that crash lands in the middle of a housing estate in Moscow - and what a place to land. For the first time aliens aren’t landing on New York, or Hong Kong, or London. Nice! A good, new idea of what spaceships are needed for and how you power them, this could have been an origin story for opening up into a whole galaxy of new stuff.

The aliens’ suits (and blimey was there more very well done CGI than you could shake a stick at in the last 30 minutes), were genius and I loved finding out what was inside them - all of them. Great performances, good take on ‘Attack the Block’ meets ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ meets ‘Independence Day’, and I like how it all turned out. In fact, the only thing that would improve it is a sequel.


Verdict: 8/10; brave the subtitles and go see it.

There - one film review a post, from now on. You can blame Fred.

Soopytwist.