There has got to be massive rating manipulation going on?

Rating: 1/10 (21 October 2009)

I went to see this movie on the strength of the ratings. It was a massive disappointment. IMDb - I think you need to check the IP addresses of reviewers. Are they all from South Africa by any chance? The movie is a hodge podge of borrowed clichés and visuals from start to finish. First the spaceship arrives over Johannesburg in the manner of Independence Day. However the rest of the world fail to notice when the aliens (prawns) inside are discovered to be malnourished and confused, so a local company is contracted to put them all in unguarded shanty towns where they can mix freely with the poor human population. At this point the movie shifts from being a sci-fi movie (not that it ever was, because the spaceship is inert the whole time) to a social commentary type with thinly veiled references to Apartheid. The local Nigerian gangsters are portrayed in the film pretty much the same way as they are demonised by local South Africans in reality. Its also only a matter of time before the locals start calling Zimbabweans Prawns. Yes, the film actually adds to the already hateful xenophobia which exists in South Africa.
Setting aside the appallingly superficial and narrow minded social commentary - we are then treated to a Blade Runner type landscape where Transformer like Mechs fight it out with stereotypical mercenary types. We even have the hero mutating into a Prawn in the manner of the Fly, whereupon he is taken away for medical experiments. By the way, the Prawns look a lot like the monsters in Predator, although less menacing.
The whole thing is very grating because it is so illogical and without vision. Awful movie - and I wont trust IMDb ratings again.