Taking an obvious metaphor for apartheid as a mere jumping-off point, District 9 is set in Johannesburg, South Africa, where 20 years earlier a spaceship appeared above the city and mysteriously stopped.
Humans ‘rescued’ the starving alien creatures inside and rounded them up in an area called District 9. This quickly morphed into a slum where Nigerian gangsters preyed on the aliens, who have been given the derogatory but accurate nickname ‘prawns’.
The time has finally come for the government agency/weapons manufacturer MNU to relocate District 9 further from the city. In charge of the operation is bureaucratic dweeb Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a guy who married the boss’s daughter and has spent the rest of his life happily pushing pencils in a larger-than-average cubicle.
As he serves eviction notices to the prawns living in the assorted shacks, Wikus takes delight in firebombing alien eggs and wielding his authority. But when he comes afoul of a mysterious substance cooked up by an alien, Wikus almost immediately begins a transformation into the world’s first human-alien hybrid. After the government initially tries to slice him up for research and weapons development, Wikus escapes and takes refuge in the only hiding place he has left: District 9.
What follows is a constant build of action and tension, as Wikus sets out to recover the substance that transformed him.
With a vivid imagination and a taste for gore, Blomkamp dreams up a whole arsenal of alien weapons that fry, blast and dismember human beings in all kinds of jaw-dropping ways.
The film uses faux-documentary footage, news reports and security cameras combined with traditional photography to create its own kind of realism, giving the viewer the distinct feeling they’re right next to Wikus. Blomkamp’s hand-held style is effective and never jerky.
District 9 isn’t exactly sci-fi for the ages, but it’s impressive not just as a debut, but as a new example of how to use original sci-fi without a $200 million budget and overblown space battles.
