District 9

Neil Blomkamp's District 9 begins like a lot of summer blockbusters - with aliens arriving in a giant mothership. The story goes on to include a lot of things we expect in a movie like this, such as fear and paranoia about the alien visitors, gun fights involving strange alien weaponry, and giant robots. It also gives us something we should expect, but usually don't get in these kind of movies - actual ideas. This is a movie that is actually interested in the humans and the aliens, their individual cultures, how they co-exist, and looks at both sides. Yes, this idea has been done before, but it's rarely been done this well. District 9 easily shoots to near the top of the summer's, and possibly the year's, crop of films.

Funny that months ago, no one even knew the movie existed. While Hollywood was busy hyping up Transformers as the end-all movie of summer 2009, this little movie snuck in with little fanfare and hype, and has suddenly exploded in recent weeks. The film was made on a modest budget by a relatively new director, and features a cast with no famous names or faces. In fact, the most famous name involved with the project is the producer, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong). Despite all this, the movie ends up looking better than competing films that cost hundreds of millions more to make. Take the aliens themselves, for example. The humans in the movie call them "Prawns", due to the fact that the creatures dig through garbage like lowly bottom feeders, and kind of look like a cross between a crustacean and an insect. The creatures are made entirely with CG, but they are the most convincing CG aliens I have seen in a movie in a long time. Not once do they look out of place, or like plastic video game characters. They look like living creatures, and are capable of as much emotion as their human co-stars.

The aliens arrived in a massive ship that hovered over most of the world's major cities, then suddenly stopped overhead Johannesburg, South Africa. It hung motionless in the air for several months, until a crew of humans finally found a way to enter the ship. They discovered the inhabitants onboard were sickly, malnourished, and in need of care that the humans could not provide. Instead, the aliens were sent to live in a run down habitat area known as District 9. We learn all of this through documentary-style footage, which is a lot more convincing (and less likely to cause motion sickness) than in other recent attempts at "monster movie documentaries", such as Cloverfield or Quarantine. We also learn that this all happened nearly 30 years ago, and the people are starting to get restless about these visitors who seemingly refuse to leave. We see "interviews" with people who view the aliens as second or third class citizens, and we also see signs that designate certain buildings or places as being off limits to the creatures.

A government agency known as the MNU has been formed to study the aliens and their technology, as well as keep them under control. The plot kicks in when the agents are ordered to relocate the aliens dwelling in District 9 to a new concentration camp-like setting, and Wilkus Van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is placed in charge of the operation. Wilkus is upbeat and optimistic when we first see him being interviewed for the cameras, but he quickly finds himself over his head as he tries to reason with the aliens and convince them to come with them to the new area that is to be their home on Earth. While exploring a shack belonging to one of the creatures, he foolishly picks up a canister, which ends up spraying him with a strange chemical fluid. Nothing seems wrong at first, but soon, he begins to show signs of illness and is hospitalized. I will not reveal any more or what happens to him. It's best to walk into District 9 knowing as little as possible. Avoid talking to people about this movie before you see it if you can.

I think knowing little about the film beforehand greatly enhanced my experience. I knew the basic idea about aliens living amongst us and being discriminated against, but the turns the story eventually takes and the way it is told is genuinely gripping. At last, we have an action movie that grabs the mind and the senses at the same time. The questions it raises about how different people react to the visitors (some fear them, some sympathize, and some even try to exploit and make a profit off of them) are challenging and direct. It may not exactly be subtle, but it is effective, and never heavy-handed. I liked the way that the aliens generally view the humans with resentment. They know that they are being exploited, but they have little choice in the manner. They don't want to be here as much as we want them here, but they don't have a choice. When the MNU come knocking on their doors to move them to a different area, they react in different ways. Some are compliant, some question the move, and some don't even understand what's going on. It gives a sense that the aliens have a class system of their own with different ideals. Some are more aware of what's going on than others, while others are content to dig through scraps for survival, living day-by-day.

The movie isn't all talk, though. There are some intense and well-edited action sequences, especially during the last half of the film. They're certainly more involving than any other action movie you've seen this summer, and very brutal without being unintentionally over the top. It's this mixture of intelligence and mayhem that shows Blomkamp understands how to speak to a well-rounded audience. He can give us the tension of a big budget shoot out without dumbing it down. Hopefully the studios will know how to use this gift once he starts getting signed onto bigger projects. He also gets a lot of emotion out of his lead human star, Copley, and his computer generated actors. We find ourselves sympathizing with both sides as the worlds of the humans and the aliens are forced to collide. It's a truly rare movie that can make us forget that most of the cast wasn't even there on the set. We buy into the existence of the aliens while we're watching the film, and I never once found myself taken out of the story by commenting on the effects work.

I'd be happy enough with all of this, but District 9 is good enough to even end on a perfect note. It's open-ended and leaves a lot of questions unanswered - ones that hopefully will remain so. I don't want a sequel, I want things to stay as they are and leave me wondering what was going to happen next. Besides, what would the sequel be called? District 9 Part 2 doesn't sound right. If one is made, I vote for Three Years Later. You'll understand why when you see the movie.

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