An astonishing achievement from a new director

Rating: 10/10 (25 August 2009)

District 9 is one of the most original, emotional, and just plain amazing science fiction movies released in many years.
Its young director has managed something truly extraordinary, weaving together a multi-layered fable in which inhuman treatment of alien refugees in South Africa is a direct analogy to the gone-but-not-forgotten apartheid regime, but also discusses far more wide-reaching issues of racism, political expediency, corporate inhumanity, and the evil that human beings perpetrate upon one another.
Probably the film's most amazing achievement is how effortlessly it makes us despise the humans in the film and barrack for the aliens. Even the film's human protagonist vacillates between reluctant hero and desperate coward, allowing his fear and selfishness to guide his actions at several important points in the story.
This is a remarkable film, made on a relatively small budget, and exhibiting an extraordinary degree of sure-footedness for a first feature. In can be violent at times, but never gratuitously so - everything that happens is in aid of the story.
District 9 is an instant cult classic, and I hope it achieves the kind of box office it so richly deserves.