WARNING: This review contains spoilers.
So this movie took me by surprise when I watched it with my mother on Friday. Everyone has been telling me how good of a movie it was, but I was still a bit skeptical. That is, until I actually saw it.
Now the premise of the movie begins with an alien ship over Johannesburg in South Africa. For some reason or another, the ship cannot seem to move and the aliens onboard were somehow saved and given a place to live in area below. A place that would quickly become rundown and heavily guarded since the surrounding people despise the aliens for being different. This place is, of course, District 9.
The movie opens up like a documentary on Wikus van de Merwe, who has become part of a terrible incident involving the Prawns (the derogatory word for the aliens). Wikus is an MNU field agent who was recently put in charge of an operation involving getting the Prawns to sign an eviction notice and force them to leave their current state of residence into another place away from the people of Johannesburg. By some twisted turn of events, Wikus is exposed to some kind of alien chemical and begins to turn into an alien. Wikus is taken into custody by his own company and begins to get experimented on since his new metamorphism enables him to use operate the aliens’ weaponry. Wikus, who is undoubtedly subject to be killed and experimented on more, escapes from MNU to District 9. There he learns of Christopher Johnson, an alien that claims can help Wikus turn back to normal if he can get the fuel that Wikus originally confiscated.
To sum up, the rest of the movie entails how Wikus and Christopher break into MNU, steal the fuel back, and send Christopher back to his home planet where he can get reinforcements to help save the rest of his alien brethren. As this goes on, you can see Wikus turning more and more into an alien himself.
The plot of the movie isn’t the most original, I think it’s actually based on something, but the presentation is excellent. The way the movie opens as a documentary and slowly transitions into more of an action-style movie is done seamlessly. And the story is given so well and so quickly that there isn’t even time to question the obvious plot holes. The alien fuel is the same thing that turns Wikus into an alien on exposure? That just doesn’t make sense to me, but who cares! There wasn’t even time to think about trivial things like that during the course of the action. The social environment that District 9 takes place in is done very well too. To be honest, if the events of District 9 were to actually take place, I think that the government and the people could react in a very similar manner. I’m not trying to sound cruel, but people would not allow themselves to integrate with aliens at all. It’s just the way humanity is right now – we can’t even get along with each other well, let alone with other forms of intelligent life that might be out there.
I also feel that the movie was done very well aesthetically. There wasn’t a need for heavy computer graphics on anything, other than the spaceship, the aliens, and the alien weapons; so the resources they did allocate to these elements were pretty good. I especially liked the weapons (the robot thing was awesome). While everything was done in a futuristic/extraterrestrial style, I don’t think anything was done over the top either. A lot of you may disagree with me as air blasters and lightning guns may be way out there, but oh well.
Overall, District 9 was definitely a sci-fi action movie, but was also something that hinted at something greater. The documentary-like presentation, the interactions of the aliens and human society, and Wikus’s story all amount to something a bit more atypical than what I think people are used to seeing from a sci-fi movie. I think you will be pleasantly surprised though, if you haven’t seen it already, because I know I was. Again, it may not be for everyone, but I think this one is for most.
