A Realistic Perspective on Alien Invasions

Rating: 8/10 (7 October 2009)

"District 9" is shot in a documentary style and takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2010. Twenty years ago a space ship arrived over Johannesburg, and hovered over the city for three months without moving or communicating. The government found alien workers sick, dying and without leadership. The Johannesburg's government took it amongst themselves to take the aliens workers off the ship and put them in a "refugee camp" called District 9. Fast forward twenty years later and we see there are riots and shooting involving the aliens, who are now referred to as "prawns," because they look like a cross between a crawfish and grasshopper. With tensions high and people growing hostile towards the "prawns" and the South African government, they decide to contract a private company called Multi-National United (MNU). The MNU is only intersected in the advanced weaponry that the alien have. The man in charge of the eviction is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley). When Wikus goes into District 9, we see him searching one of the shanty houses. Wikus comes across an alien tube that sprays on his face and into his mouth, this fuses his DNA with alien DNA and he is now the most wanted man in South Africa.
Throughout this film we could see the director Neill Blomkamp intention of showing an alien invasion in a realistic way and showing what would happen if aliens landed in a third world country. Neill Blomkamp even said that he used some news footage from the Apartheid riots and put the aliens into the scene to make this Sci-Fi film more realistic. Although this is a Sci-Fi film, I was entertained from beginning to end. It is very refreshing to see a new perspective on an alien film. Also if this were a film about human rights and social injustice, a film that this would have been looked over.