Very good serious science fiction

Rating: 9/10 (9 September 2009)

You don't get many South African scifi special effects extravaganzas to the pound - in fact I can only think of one, and it's this one.
Thanks to Peter Jackson, this story of stranded aliens hits the screen.
If the truth be told, there is a lot of familiarity in much of what unfolds, yet I don't recall it being put together this way before.
Told in a faux documentary style (marred only by the inclusion of some sequences which could not have come from news/documentary footage), the story has strong echoes of apartheid and the Holocaust, albeit delivered without preaching and with state of the art scifi trimmings. I thought early one that we might be subjected to actors in giant insect suits, but my worries were groundless - the effects (and there are a lot of them) are almost flawless. But then, one wouldn't expect anything else from Weta.
There is an excellent central performance from Sharlto Copley, a 35-year old South African with almost no screen acting experience.
I wasn't over-keen on the "Bourne"-isation of much of the visuals (enough now, thanks, can we please get back to using tripods?), I thought the start could have been usefully trimmed by a quarter of an hour or so, and I would have quite liked a stronger resolution. But these are relatively minor quibbles.
A decent scifi action thriller with serious points to make. Recommended.