District 9

Whether it’s a low-budget indie flick, most likely starring Micheal Cera, or a low-budget sci-fi flick starring vomit-inducing unsteady cam, there’s always at least one movie that “sneaks up” on audiences and delivers the “surprise hit of the” fill-in-the-season. Last year, you had Cloverfield come out to some decent reviews. You had Juno and Waitress and stuff like excite the critics to uneasy proportions. This year, we get an Independence Day meets Halo meets political allegory to keep us entertained through the hot August nights. Quick hit: quite entertaining.

District 9 is the brainchild of one Neil Blomkamp. Who’s Neil Blomkamp? One rich mother now who’s laughing over his bitterly cold platter of sweet revenge. You see, Peter Jackson, yes Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson, had signed on to produce a Halo flick. He tapped Blomkamp to helm the hundred-million dollar movie even though Mr. Blomkamp had all the experience of an assistant gaffer. That’s when the studios said, um, no. That’s when Peter Jackson said, fine, go take a long jump off a short pier, sticking to his man Blomkamp and telling Blomkamp to make a full-length feature off of the short he had previously developed, Alive in Joberg.

And that’s where District 9 came from: a tale of a spaceship, shanty towns, and shrimp-like looking aliens. The interesting thing? Critics loved that it takes up a higher cause, drawing parallels to apartheid in South Africa. In the District 9 universe, a giant alien spaceship arrives and proceeds to hover. Turns out the aliens have no one in command, leaving the humans to theorize that all we have left are the “worker” bees of this alien hive. So, doing as humans do, they drag those aliens down to the surface, set-up a big old refugee area, and sorta run it with military authority.

Yet, the whole political allegory thing takes up around 20 minutes of this flick. Yes, we get to the how the area, District 9, has evolved into a massive slum. We see how the aliens are treated with annoyed disdain, pandered to with little effort and thrown the scraps of humanity. We see how the aliens adjust and make due, becoming a teeming mess of scavenging, poverty-stricken prisoners. It’s not a pretty sight, and it’s not really meant to be. Bad humans, bad!

However, most of District 9 becomes a simple, guerrilla-style sci-fi thriller. Focusing on Wikus Van De Merwe, and goofy, mostly-prejudiced, but largely unintimidating MNU officer, District 9 follows the same beats that you would expect any entertaining movie to do. Tasked as the head of an eviction force, Wikus hams it up for the cameras as he leads the charge to “legally” evict the aliens from District 9 and move them to the more remote, even less humane District 10. As Wikus mentions at one point, it’s not a better place, it’s more like a prisoner camp.
Ah, but what would a sci-fi flick be without conflict? Wikus falls prey to some alien technology and suddenly becomes a victim, a valuable commodity, and a fugitive all at the same time. Moving into the realm of The Fly-meets-The Fugutive, Wikus must escape from the now “evil” humans, survive amongst the aliens he disdainfully condemns, and find an impossible solution to his predicament. This means, good times!

Presented partly as a pseudo-documentary, District 9 offers personal testimonials interspersed with “actual” field footage, security cameras, gun-mounted cameras, and news footage to present a off-kilter, reality-version movie. And largely, it succeeds, with little vomit-inducing shakiness, but lots of extreme close-up-in-the-face of anxiety-inducing reality for all those involved. There’s some fun action sequences, especially once we get to see the alien technology come into play. It’s like a great live-version of a video game, with chain guns, plasma rifles, sonic rays, and all the other good stuff that you would want to power-up on to get past the next box. Even the wonky Mech Warrior battlesuit is fun to watch, because low budgets often mean creative ways to make fake things look cool.

Overall, District 9 is a fun ride, but apparently not for everyone. Is this your completely brain-dead, look at the shiny robots, Transformers-level drivel? No, not at all, it actually has some poignant scenes and allows one to think, even if just a tiny, tiny bit about bad things done by you and me. But really, it’s not a deep movie, it’s not what the critics are touting as socially conscious dressed up in sci-fi. It’s just well-written sci-fi that you should see. It’s sad when a simple, but interesting idea is held up as the pinnacle of innovation and creativeness; however, it is great that we got to see it in the first place. Out of 1.8 million refugee aliens, District 9 staves off eviction with 1.26 miillion alien “prawns” leading the charge. A solid flick to check out!