A thoroughly disturbing vision presented in an excellent science-fiction movie

Rating: 10/10 (24 September 2009)

Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp raise the science-fiction genre to a new level this year.
District 9 has nothing in common with milestones like Alien or The Thing or Dark City; but this necessarily isn't a bad thing. Blomkamp's project is rather a socio-political, ethical approach to the question "what if?", presented in documentary filming style, of which it lets go in the right moment: when the personal story and struggle of the protagonist against his former company (the MNU, which seeks to commercially utilize the Prawns' weaponry) takes over.
District 9 is presented by very fast-paced, fascinating story-telling. It aims at invoking strong emotions like sympathy, empathy, loathing and horror among the audience by showing us scenes of men who act extraordinarily inhuman. These scenes feature, as one can easily imagine, a lot of gore, which is meant to be disturbing. Further, District 9 offers excellent CGI effects that have been nicely implemented into the movie.
In the end, a very realistic - and thus all the more disturbing - scenario is created by Blomkamp and Jackson, peering at the questionable conditions of the real South African slums in the vicinity of Johannesburg.