What do you get if you mix ‘Predator’ like aliens, with ‘Starship Troopers’ like gore, throw in ‘The Fly’ some shaky camera-work (don’t worry we are not talking ‘Cloverfield’ here) and then give it a decent story/documentary premise……hell you get District 9. Built on a budget of just $30m and with a setting of South Africa a reversal of the good and bad protagonists and with nary a romantic moment, this should not have worked. But it does, and how!
This was an eye opener for me, I expected the usual take, the aliens (Prawns) that attack and tear mankind apart before the stars and stripes flag (or the global equivalent) goes up, and wallop, godamn those heroes! STOP. Whoa there, let me get down off of this tired Hollywood’en horse and introduce you to a film that may have just redefined the Sci Fi film for the moment.
If you have not yet seen it, do not judge this one on hear-say, it isn’t the formulaic entity you might expect, for a start it employs nobody’s - or at least no-one I could identify. The story in a nutshell is that around 1m aliens arrive in their huge spacecraft which takes up a hovering position over Johannesburg, nothing at all happens, until humans force their way onto the craft and find the aliens in a sickened state, whereupon a humanitarian effort takes place to house and feed them. They are herded into a slum district and for a while take centre stage in news etc, but then as news moves on they become unwanted and largely forgotten by the media, only one company is involved, and them because they wish to take advantage of alien technology and weapons.
The main character is Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a government official charged with evicting the aliens from the original slum where the ghetto humans do not want them, to a new environment, an accident causes Wikkus to have a change of heart (for his own selfish needs) and he discovers atrocities that are taking place on aliens, and the attempts to utilise the weaponry. This however is not his motivation or indeed his problem, though he does have to try and help the aliens to help himself. The last third of the film will satisfy most modern Sci Fi fans lust for explosions and gore, whilst the bond between the alien and…well…human grows stronger.
8.5/10 - Well acted, a great docu-style overlay, black humour, aliens, technology, gore and a message about racism and ghetto gang culture, that you would be hard pressed to see in any mainstream effort. A bleak view of humanity perhaps, but quite possibly the best film I have seen this year.