Low budget? Looks amazing.

The climactic battle sequence alone could be a music video. Light-absorbing black shapes of the aliens, s.ing them as negative space with glowing teeth, is a genius way to both save the cost on creatures that could easily look silly, and to maximise their terrifying visual impact.

All the young actors are great (including an even younger John Boyega).

A few reasons I love the hell out of this:

• it feels like what I understand classic sci-fi is all about: allegory for current real-world concerns, comment on social and political issues of the time of its making. I suspect that if I lived in England, this story would have had an entire additional meaning for me.
• it looks amazing for what I suspect is a low-budget film (see above)
• it’s an alien invasion that targets somewhere other than NYC.
• it does something I don’t think I’ve seen any other movie, in this genre at least, do: present two sets of protagonists (mugger kids and their nurse victim), get me to sympathise with them equally, and then put them in a room together as they have to join forces against a larger threat. It raised all kinds of interesting, conflicting emotional responses – and again, I probably missed a whole, even more rewarding level of that by not being from England.