Movie 4: District 9

Ross County 2. I promise I’ll try and not make a bad football score joke every time that I review a film with a number in the title.

Anyway, plot.

So an alien ship arrives on Earth and settles over Johannesburg. After a few years the ship is broken in to and around a million malnourished aliens are found on board. They are relocated to a government camp below the ship that subsequently becomes a slum. 20 years later MNU, a government contractor I believe, are tasked with moving the problematic Prawns (the name given to the aliens cause they look kinda like prawns). The film initially follows the man in charge of this operation, Wikus Van De Merwe, in a documentary style. Things go a bit pear shaped and Wikus (pronounced Vik-as) is exposed to an alien liquid that starts to change him.

The Prawns weapon technology can only be operated by a Prawn, Stargate Ancient tech style, and the changing Wikus. This makes him a very valuable man and causes him to go on the run where he starts to sympathise with the Prawns.

And hopefully that’s not too spoilerly. The film is a very heavy handed analogy to apartheid, but that’s fine. When I say heavy handed I don’t mean that it’s badly done, just as bloody obvious as V (the original) being about Nazis and not lizard aliens. You can also see that it benefits from some pre-production on the Halo movie that never happened as there are some similarities in the look of the picture.

I actually remember seeing the original short film, Alive in Joburg, on You Tube (have a hunt, pretty sure it was there) and hoping it would get a longer treatment. When Halo fell through Peter Jackson gave director Neill Blomkamp $30 million and said “go do whatever you want”. And its great that he did.

The effects in this movie are fantastic. The Prawns fit in with their surroundings perfectly and are very, well not human but you know what I mean. One niggle is that you seem to be able to see pretty much the whole of their mothership from wherever the camera happens to be but that’s pretty common. But it isn’t just another wham bam sci-fi movie. It’s very well characterised and written as well. Like Wikus you’ll find yourself caring for the Prawns, or at least main smart Prawn Christopher Johnson. While they aren’t all humanised, most just seem like semi intelligent animals, comparisons to Alien Nation would be easy to make too.

I hope to hell they make a District 10 as I’d really like to see what happens next

Up Next: The Love Guru (yeah I’m dreading that one a bit)