Being Human

Rating: 7/10 (14 October 2012)

Many of the ideas of the celebrated film 'Alien' are reinterpreted in Neill Blomkamp's movie 'District 9' in the context of a parable about Apartheid South Africa; and rather more surprisingly, there are also shades of 'The Office', as an un-self aware bureaucrat becomes an unlikely hero. It's nicely done, and the political parallels don't seem wholly limited to the past either, but the film's weakness, rather like that of Orwell's 'Animal Farm', is that the parable is perhaps just a little too obvious: it's hard to care too much about the plot when it's so obviously constructed to make a point. But there's skill in the telling: we're encouraged to see the aliens in progressively more humanised form (although the film perhaps also suggested that being human is nothing particularly to be proud of). 'District 9' may not be a masterpiece, but it's certainly more interesting than the average piece of celluloid sci-fi.