REVIEW: DISTRICT 9! - OMG Horror - The Blog of the Living Dead: Horror Movie News, Features, Reviews, Games, Free Horror Films, Splatter, Gore, Puppies

Who says modern day blockbusters are completely soul devoid and offer little more than visual pyrotechnics? Okay, well most do seem to fall under said description. But to all you sci-fi junkies and action hounds, or really any casual fan of cinema, you better friggin’ take note – Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 is a highly charged, kick-ass thrill-ride equipped with well thought out social commentary and a fresh take on the interaction between humans and aliens. As outlandishly imaginative as the film is, you actually believe it could happen, and that’s about the best damn compliment one can offer for a film of this ilk. It grabs you from the jump and doesn’t let go until the intense, even if rote, high-octane finale.

As the flick opens, we’re inundated with a docu-news style format. It’s like we’re watching CNN or some BBC world news coverage. We learn a massive space craft has permeated Earth’s atmosphere and is lying dormant above Johannesburg, South Africa. When the US military pries its way in, it discovers roughly 1 million alien beings. They’re completely malnourished and diseased, incapable of almost everything including any kind of gumption or critical thought. So what happens? These aliens, “Prawns” as they’re called (and somewhat resemble), are brought to the ground and sheltered in a giant holding area called District 9, more or less a massive ghetto, laced with shanties, filled with crime. The prawns take residence and become slowly integrated into society, albeit among the lowest of the low. The US military/government is interested in how to operate Prawn weaponry and use it to their advantage.

We meet Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a pencil pushing yes-man who, as a result of being promoted by his soon-to-be father in law, finds him self in way too far over his head. He’s assigned to evicting and partially relocating the Prawns. As he bobs and weaves his way through District 9, we get a sense of how monstrous yet charismatic Wikus becomes. He has a charm and an impish sense of humor that makes his blow-torch eradication of “prawn eggs” that much more disturbing. He’s like a frightening Hitler caricature, even has a little mustache. He serves eviction notices to prawn residents, knowing full well most are to sick and indigent to understand the documents. When he happens upon an intellectually advanced prawn, comically (re-)named Christopher Johnson, he discovers what appears to be a giant chemistry set. Only he doesn’t know, as we do, that said chemistry set is an elaborate 20 year project meant to be used to fly up to the mother ship and return to their home planet.

One problem. When Wikus discovers a cylinder filled with a black liquid, what Christopher describes as “our only technology,” it explodes in his face. Literally. Wikus slowly becomes sicker and sicker, until he ultimately wakes up in a hospital to find a lobster-like alien claw as one of his hands. All of this is presented very realistic and frankly, quite frightening. As Wikus slowly morphs into a body of half-breed genetics, he becomes one of the most financially sought after commodities on the planet, and as to avoid being a medical experiment (which includes operating alien weaponry and killing innocent prawns), he escapes the hospital and goes on the lam. He hides in the one spot no one will look for him, in the slums of District 9. From there, he (re)teams with Christopher to help him find the liquid (so the prawn can return home) in return Christopher will recombine Wikus’ genes back to a fully formed human. Making all this a reality proves far more difficult than the theory.

District 9 is an exemplary blend of raw, gritty documentary visuals with first rate special effects. What starts off as a very real feeling story becomes met with a barrage of equally convincing CGI (all prawns are said to be CG). In fact, it’s the raw documentary feel in the early stages of the film that makes you emotionally invested in the characters (Wikus and Christopher mostly) and when the film devolves into in many ways conventional action fare, we’re already so entrenched with the story, we actually believe it all. Well, most of it. Most of this is attributable to 29 year old director Neil Blompkamp, whose free-form improvisational techniques prove to offer a world of immersion and veracity that make you feel you’re almost inside the movie instead of watching it.

But the really interesting thing about the film is the parallels it draws to African apartheid and the harsh treatment natives endure, often seen as second rate alien immigrants. Shot on location in Johannesburg, we can almost smell the hardship, the poverty. We get a glimpse at slumlords and drug runners, the notion of inter-species prostitution (which we don’t see visually), the hellish world people, never-mind the prawns, must actually face in the real world. Setting the film in Johannesburg, without major American movie-stars, is a calculated risk, but one that pays off in a way that makes the themes that much more resonant. Again, the ending to me can be a construed a bit of a disappointment, but to actually believe such an outlandish scenario is the highest praise a film like this can warrant. District 9 is not to be missed!