Great SciFi like we had not seen in a LONG time

Rating: 10/10 (20 August 2009)

This is a GREAT movie about a very plausible situation. A MUST-SEE!! An Alien ship, transporting hundreds of Thousands of Alien population malfunctions and they are obliged to land here on earth. This is an important detail, because later on you will get to understand that they are both technologically and socially much more advanced than us, and they would have not chosen earth as a destination. Actually as they were maneuvering a smaller aircraft coming from the main ship lands, but that is a minor detail that will only become major later. In any case we get to the main ship and bring the aliens down to earth, they were weakened and needed food, so the decision was made to transport them all down to a refugee camp as a 'temporary measure' they somehow were able to breath fine, and particularly enjoyed cat food. The main ship remains afloat Johanesburg in South Africa and down below the Aliens live in a camp that quickly turns into a funky slum. What is great about the movie is making the transition between Alien exotica and 'everyday Alien", we see them interchanging with humans, trading, and constantly moving about. Although they look like human sized lobsters, and are referred to as "Prawns" they pretty much have the same configuration as ours.
The movie starts actually a full twenty years after the 'landing' so all the glamor of news and novelty is gone and the South African Government is just trying to move them to another district, further away from their capital city by forced eviction. At this point the man in charge of the operations, Wikus Van De Merwe played by Sharlto Copley gets infected by a canister that contains a liquid two of the aliens had been hard at work for a long time. He does not know this, he thinks they are gangsters because their hut is full of computers and weaponry, but in reality they are the scientists amongst the aliens that have been working all this time to fix the spaceship, when he accidentally sprays some of the contents on himself he starts triggering a genetic reaction that will slowly change him into one of the creatures in a slow but very visible way. The strong, excellent performance by Wikus is what makes it believable, he is a totally square and regular guy, actually pretty good natured and in the process of this horrific change he maintains his humanity and sanity and has a complete change of heart in his relationship to the Aliens, as he is forced by circumstance to 'bond' with the one scientist who was involved in making the liquid, and his small son.
The film is important in showing the complexities of the exchanges with the Aliens and covers full well the political intrigue and inhumane behavior that is part of our present state of evolution. It starts out very slow and is not particularly great in the introduction of this information, so that at one point I was getting very impatient, but then started to enjoy the flow of the story. The turning point was the intervention of the liquid that changes Wikus and everything about the movie from that point forward. A rare instance in SciFi where violence is not gratuitous and all the tech makes perfect sense. It will doubtlessly become a cult film.