Underneath all the Smurfs and Cowboys & Aliens brouhaha, there was a another film that came out last weekend that got a lot of attention in certain corners, despite opening on only eight screens in the US. That movie? Attack The Block, a small British sci-fi/adventure film about a group of inner-city kids defending their South London council estate apartment block against an alien invasion.

The reviews over the weekend were quite good, and the film’s per-screen average was amazing (for example, the little blue guys did $10k per screen on a little over 3000 screens, Attack did better than $16k on eight). Some of this was due to word of mouth from Comicon and festival screenings, as well as the presence of co-star Nick Frost and producer Edgar Wright, who, as I shouldn’t have to mention, have given us great things like Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim.

None of those eight screens were anywhere near Richmond or DC, but a little googling yesterday trying to figure out when it would open someplace I could see it managed to also find a press screening at an undisclosed location in the District last night, and a means to get myself into the lottery for free passes to said screening. Obviously, my name came up in the lottery, or there wouldn’t be a point to composing this post.

It turns out the screening was in Chinatown, right next to the Verizon Center, one of the busiest neighborhoods in the city on the best of days, made all the more busy due to several hundred pre-teens in cowboy boots: it seems that the Gelfling Taylor Swift was playing the arena last night. I finally made it through the morass of pop country fans to the theater, where I was ushered behind the ropes, handed an 11×17 poster for the film, and pointed at an unmarked screening room.

I’d been to pre-release screenings before, usually on radio station passes, but never a press screening. It really wasn’t any different than any other movie screening, other than having the back half of the theater reserved for press, the absence of previews, and a couple of studio PR flacks randomly asking questions to some of the folks milling around.

But what about the movie? It was a lot of fun, in that low-budget action movie sort of way – you can tell that the people involved had a lot of fun making it, and that enthusiasm for the project pulls you in. The cast was put together well, especially when you consider that they’re a bunch of unknowns kids and first-time actors; lots of good funny lines delivered well. Being low budget, it’s shot mostly in one building, but it works well for the subject matter; lots of dingy, claustrophobic hallways for the aliens to chase people through. And, of course, the aliens themselves were very well done. Nothing fancy, but they’re still pretty iconic, all matte black with those flourescing teeth.

The only thing that I see putting certain American audiences off are the sometimes thick accents and potentially unfamiliar slang – it’s VERY British. That said, it didn’t seem to bother the crowd I saw it with, which was amazingly diverse, running the gamut from harried young professionals to trendy urban teenagers to elderly latino women (I suspect they didn’t have enough pre-distributed passes, and were handing out free tickets to folks milling around the mall outside), who all seemed to really enjoy it and not be bothered by any of this – of course, this is a big city; it might not play as well in the sticks, which is, frankly, a shame.

Anyway, to sum up, last night’s adventure was an interesting and novel experience; and now I have a few connections to find further opportunities in the future. And the movie was just as fun as promised by all those internet film geeks – I highly recommend checking it out when it makes it to your town.