The film makes a mark of distinction with its visual grit and documentary style opening

Rating: 10/10 (4 October 2015)

Director Neil Blomkamp, guided by movie-making legend Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy), bitingly makes his directing premier in this thought provoking, gut wrenching sci-fi. The film makes a mark of distinction with its visual grit and documentary style opening that beckons you to enter the impoverished squalor and mystery that is the alien inhabited District 9.
We quickly learn that twenty eight years ago aliens entered Earth's atmosphere. However these aliens are not little green men or the type-cast fear invoking invaders we've come to expect from CGI driven blockbusters. The aliens in the film are insectoid bi-pedals ingeniously crafted and effortlessly real. Despite the weapons at their disposal, which no human is capable of using, the aliens are complacent and fearful of their human hosts who, over time, begin to despise them. Unsure, of what to do with their extraterrestrial visitors, an organization called Multi-National United (MNU) is commissioned to handle their affairs. The organization immediately takes an interest in the aliens' armaments even as they set up a restricted housing area for them. That area, which devolves into a treacherous slum, is District 9.
Insectoid aliens clashing with locals and being price gouged by gangsters at first glance may not seem like the most believable scenario. Yet, the impassioned, and at times heart-rending acting of South African newcomer Sharlto Copley make it stunningly easy to suspend reality. As the viewer begins to peel back the varying layers that have grown in around District 9 we probe at its mystique and danger alongside Copley as the initially awkward protagonist Wikus van der Merwe. Copley's character evolves right before our eyes and his performance takes on a terrifying urgency under pressure that will have viewers pleadingly on the edge of their seats. Most impressively, much of Copley's performance was improvised beside stand-ins for his CGI counterparts. Obviously, Copley never interacts with the alien antagonist deemed Christopher Johnson or battles massive humanoid robots, this is all movie magic, but due to his incredible delivery you would never know it.
Blomkamp has created a reality that is mutated from Earth as we know it just enough so that our minds still have a familiar place in which to conceivably roam. Despite the gory force of the aliens' weapons due to many speculative factors they are unable or unwilling to cast off the prejudice and marginalized personhood they encounter. The aliens are referred to as "Prawns," a moniker that alludes to their mistrusted status as bottom feeders. With the striking image of an incapacitated spaceship hanging in the African sky, Blomkamp constructs a most ominous visual. The movie becomes an unsettling parable for South Africa's history of apartheid.
The result of Blomkamp's vision is delivered with striking effect by combining elements of fiction and history that puts the science back in science fiction. District 9 follows its thoughts to an elegant conclusion that will leave its viewers considering the characters and the fairness of their own infrastructure long after the movie reel and it's clucking aliens have receded to silence.