District 9 will blow your mind
Ahoy, loyal readers, and welcome to yet another film review as the summer blockbuster season winds down. This movie in particular is one I’ve been anxiously anticipating since I first watched the teaser trailer several months ago, and my expectations for its quality were exceedingly high. The film in question is District 9, a startlingly original science fiction allegory for apartheid South Africa. In all honesty, I expected to be slightly disappointed, seeing as I’d irresponsibly built District 9 up in my mind to be this summer’s knock-your-socks-off movie. I’ve done this before for lesser films in the past, and I have without exception left the theater feeling cheated and disheartened. But after seeing the midnight showing of District 9 last evening, I didn’t.
The premise is where the originality of this gem begins. Twenty years prior to the film’s present day, a mammoth alien saucer appeared hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. After weeks without incident or contact, humans entered the craft and discovered a race of shrimp-like creatures derisively dubbed “Prawn.” The aliens were worker drones, and had little initiative on their own to fix their immobile craft or fend off the encroaching humans. Government organizations hired private military contractor MNU to confine the aliens to a concentration camp immediately under their spacecraft, the camp being the titular District 9.
The film follows MNU cubicle-man Wikus van der Merwe, portrayed brilliantly by little-known actor Sharlto Copley, as he begins serving eviction notices to aliens in District 9. While there, he comes into contact with an alien technology, and this exposure drives the remainder of the film. I won’t spoil much more for readers, but suffice it to say the plot delivers more than enough horror, action, and subtle political commentary to satisfy just about any moviegoer.
I’d like to offer a word about this movie’s more violent sequences to those readers apprehensive as to whether this film is up their respective alley. To be frank, the action in this film is nothing short of shit-your-pants incredible. Alien weaponry allows for a whole bevy of exciting special effects, most of them involving something between vaporization and dematerialization of hostile human targets. More than once the crowded theater erupted in a shocked bellow of disbelief at the gruesome spectacle on the screen, usually then devolving into a collective laughter at the incredulity of it all. One could mistake my above commentary as presenting the movie in a negative light, but suffer no delusions: I loved every moment of it.
The primary theme of inhumanity this film projects is a powerful one, and audiences leave the theater siding with the aliens and loathing the inhumane humans. The film’s greatest triumph wasn’t any groundbreaking special effect or innovative film-making technique. It was to create an alien that human audiences could relate to, sympathize with and root for. Never before has a film so fully captured the essence of what makes us human and successfully placed it behind eyes from another planet. After witnessing around two hours of the worst human nature has to offer (like weapons trafficking, genetic experiments on live test subjects, and using alien innocents as target practice), moviegoers will feel compelled to embrace something wholly in opposition to themselves, which, in my estimation, makes for an incredible film experience. For offering the most thought-provoking and fun material yet this year, District 9 quite appropriately earns a 9.6 out of 10.