Role-Reversal Alien Thriller is One Part Documentary, One Part Allegory and One Part Horror Film

Rating: 8/10 (9 February 2010)

It's strange to call a science-fiction thriller eerily captivating, but first-time feature director Neill Blomkamp has somehow managed to earn that description with a most unexpected twist on the alien invasion genre of films. Based on a six-minute short, "Alive in Joburg", he made back in 2005, director/co-screenwriter Neill Blomkamp has fashioned a propulsive, corking adventure film that manages to be a thoughtful allegory on xenophobia, corporate greed, and due to its South African location, apartheid. What is most fascinating about the screenplay co-written by Terri Tatchell is that the aliens are not positioned to the viewer as an unknown force ready to destroy mankind, as is usually the case, but rather as an escalating socio-political "situation" to which the South African government respond by assigning a multinational corporation to transport them from a ramshackle, inner-city shantytown called District 9 to another area outside of Johannesburg.
Turning our expectations upside down, Blomkamp reveals an obviously powerful alien species rendered helpless on earth by their refugee status and relegated to criminal acts. In mock-documentary style, the story begins with a series of interviews explaining the back story for the aliens. A gigantic spaceship hovers over Johannesburg in 1982 (shades of Roland Emmerich's 1996 "Independence Day") where an exploratory team discovers over a million malnourished aliens onboard without a leader. They are tall bipeds with insect-like faces and crustacean-like bodies (looking very much like Jeff Goldblum's fully transformed title character in David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of "The Fly"). Over the next two decades, the aliens conform to their squalid surroundings and engage in destructive behavior that raises the ire of the local residents who call them derogatorily "prawns". An officious Afrikaan field operative named Wikus Van De Merwe has been assigned the unenviable task of serving eviction notices to the aliens and confiscating their weaponry.
On one particular raid, Van De Merwe inadvertently sprays himself with a mysterious liquid that mutates his DNA to take on alien characteristics. He is shunted to District 9 where he relies on a more thoughtful alien named Christopher Johnson to help him reverse the transformation process. Before that can happen, the multinational corporation wants Van De Merwe for his new-found ability to handle alien weaponry (which humans cannot operate). There is also trouble brewing with Nigerian gangs eventually leading to a violent mêlée that decides the fate of not only Van De Merwe but also the aliens on earth. Blomkamp decided to cast a first-time feature actor, Sharlto Copley, as Van De Merwe, and he is quite effective in the role. At first, he appears to be a geeky corporate lackey married to the boss's daughter and intent on carrying forth his undesirable mission with little trepidation. Copley manages to show his character's arc in not only the manifestation of graphic effects but also through the sinking dejection he experiences as an evolving alien.
All the aliens are CGI-generated, and kudos belong to the visual effects team headed by Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros, and Matt Aitken for giving them a scarifying look to contrast their increasingly vulnerable state. Make no mistake that despite the film's grander statements regarding the detrimental impact of social segregation, it turns primarily into a man-on-the-run (or should I say "alien-on-the-run") B-style thriller with eye-wincing horror elements. There is a robust set of extras with the two-disc 2010 DVD set. The first disc contains 25 minutes of deleted scenes, a strong making-of documentary, and an engaging commentary track from Blomkamp. The second disc is on the light side, offering four featurettes which detail various aspects of the production, but unfortunately, there is no sign of the original short, "Alive in Joburg".