Violent but well done film is much more politically incorrect than perceived

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2009)

This quite violent science fiction film from South Africa is about seemingly slow witted aliens (who look like giant insects or crustaceans) who arrived in a giant spaceship over Johannesburg some decades ago, and were forcibly put by the government into a camp (actually one big slum) inside the city called District 9, where they live in despairing conditions. When the government decides to relocate them to concentration camps far from Johannesburg, Wikus, a nerdy public servant involved in the relocation, is sprayed with a liquid (which the aliens plan to use in a ploy to return to their planet) and slowly starts to mutate into an alien. Considered now to be a threat to the state, Wikus decides to become a fugitive and help the aliens in their plans (more things happen, but I leave the plot there). While not totally successful, it is nevertheless entertaining, and gives quite food for thought, in ways different than most critics thought. Many critics and commentators lazily called this an apartheid allegory, but if anything the film is much more politically incorrect than that: it's really about the despair white South Africans feel when they realize they are now a tiny minority in a country flooded in crime, driven in part by immigration from other African countries (the portrayal of Nigerians as brutal criminals living alongside the aliens in the slums is particularly heavy handed – it's surprising the film wasn't more denounced for this). The constant use of hand-held camera is a bit tiresome – and may make you feel dizzy as well.