Moving and powerful, District 9 is the best movie of the year

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2009)

Aliens are not new to movies. We have seen them countless time either invading, killing, or enslaving humanity. That there is still room for an original story about an alien "invasion" shows that creative thought still exists within the movie world. District 9 is a reminder that even the most ordinary of sounding plots can still deliver. One will not see a major star or large budget. Peter Jackson is the only real known name with District 9 but even his presence is forgotten as the plot moves forward. The best movies of the year, District 9 is easily the standout movie of the summer.
South Africa becomes host to almost one million alien survivors of a ship that suddenly appears in the skies above Johannesburg. The United Nations and South Africa hand control over the aliens directly to a corporation known as MNU which, along with caring for the aliens, is also interested in their weaponry. It is discovered that that alien technology can only work with their DNA so humans are unable to use them. Placed into District 9, a slum that separates the aliens from the human population which fears them, the aliens are subjected to a life not too different from those who also suffer such poverty.
Wikus Van De Merwe(Sharlto Copley) is an uninteresting cubicle worker for MNU who is also the son-in-law of one of the major corporate owners of the company. When he is promoted to lead an eviction of the aliens from from District 9 where they were placed, he sees a chance at having a better future and a real career. The Prawns, as the aliens are known, earn no sympathy from him. Humans see them mostly as a problem that sucks away resource and breed crime. Wikus has the same mentality and has little ethical concerns about cheating the Prawns out of what little they already own.
That changes the day he arrives to serve the evictions. Suddenly sprayed by an strange alien chemical, Wikus finds himself transforming into one of the Prawns. Not only this is distributing to one who was as bigoted as himself, but it also drives MNU to hold him captive. His arm, which was the first to transform, is able to use the Prawn weaponry which makes him suddenly the most valuable man in the world. If MNU can discover how to transfer this biotechnology into humans then that will make them one of the most powerful corporations in the world.
Wikus, escaping and finding a place of hiding within District 9 itself, discover the chemical he found was the necessary fuel for Prawn shuttle which has remained hidden for years. Realizing how oppressive he had once been, Wikus joins with the Prawn who developed the fuel in not only an assault on MNU's headquarters but also a final stand in District 9 itself. It is the final scenes that make District 9 the most powerful because we see one of the most touching conversions seen in a story. From seeing the Prawns as simple creatures that can be ignored, Wikus sees their oppression as a cause worth fighting for even if it means losing his own life.
If there is a small complaint then it is that we never really learn more about the Prawns and why they were made so sick in the first place. Then there is the matter of leaving aliens in the hands of a private corporation. Would the United Nations leave such a duty to a group of businessmen? It seems unlikely, but this does not subtract from the movie too much.
District 9 is easily a commentary on the affairs of humans. That the Prawns would land in a country such as South Africa is evidence that the writers were attempting to say something about society as a whole. The barbarity of MNU and humans against those who are different compares to human prejudice against other humans. South Africa, once more, has experienced this throughout its history of being a colony and since independence. One cannot but feel a sense of the injustice delivered to the Prawns without thinking back up the injustices that humans continue to deliver to each other.
The question District 9 asks is how would aliens change humanity. Would humans be better or worse? Unlike other invasion movies, District 9 shows that human reaction may be one that is not so different in terms of dealing with those who are not the same. Prejudice, that human emotion so common in all nations, may still be very well alive when it comes to those from a different world. That, it seems, is the real tragedy of District 9.
10/10