Forget Phoning Home

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2009)

Honestly, when I first saw the trailer for 'District 9' in the theatre I thought it was either one of those commercials for people to cease calling/texting during the theatre (I half expected the somewhat fake looking alien to pull out a cell or bash someone making a call) or an advertisement for the upcoming 'V' reboot. I was surprised that it was an actual movie, and since it looked fake and definitively unoriginal, I was going to skip it. I decided to give it a chance due to the very high ratings. Boy, I couldn't have been anymore wrong on all points. Fake looking? Not when you watch the movie and learn to see them as living beings. Unoriginal? Sure, it was part 'Cloverfield,' 'The Fly' (1986), 'Diary of the Dead,' and, not surprisingly, a lot of Jackson's previous involvements, such as 'Dead Alive.' But it took all the right ingredients and wonderfully spliced them together. Overall, it's an extreme human story, albeit the negative side, from either the aliens (or prawns) or human's POV. So negative, in fact, you honestly yearn to hope for something good to happen, but alas, it's based solely on human's dark side and history. If anyone leaves this and thinks this would never happen, good luck. Prejudices and hate are part of our nature, unfortunately, and unlike fictional tales such as 'Star Trek,' though entertaining and positive, 'District 9' truly showed honesty in how selfish and small we are. Despite some flaws (such as why a wanted man's security codes weren't revoked) it was truly a great movie: action, suspense, creativity – it never felt small budgeted; in fact, it was enormously realistic and horror/gore (it certainly earned its 'R' rating.) Certainly one of the best I've seen in 2009.