District 9

Since the Halo movie project wasn’t able to get off the ground, producer Peter Jackson and director Niell Blomkamp didn’t care to waste their creative momentum and decided to remake Blomkamp’s short film Alive in Joburg.

District 9 starts off as a sort of racial parable, mimicking the events surrounding apartheid in South Africa. But this time with alien refugees instead of native blacks forced to be second-class citizens.

One day 20 years ago, an enormous alien spacecraft comes to rest above the city of Johannesburg. After nothing happens for quite a long time, the local government decides to break their way in, finding a starving, dying crew of aliens. The Johannesburg realizes that it would be in bad form (in the eyes of the watching global community) to not aid the weary travelers, so they provide them food and shelter right outside the city.

The aliens are given a fenced-in plot of land to build a shanty town (the titular District 9), but sometimes they wander into the city and interact with the other citizens, often in socially negative ways, like stealing sneakers or cell phones (the aliens are believed to have no concept of ownership) or burning cars. Because the “civilized” South Africans (black and white) generally don’t get along with the aliens, they want another camp (District 10) built further away from the city.

And here we enter the story, with ignorant and bumbling bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe leading the project to serve the aliens eviction notices. This first act of the film is filmed like a comedy mockumentary like Reno 911 or The Office. Then showboating Wikus accidentally squirts himself with mysterious black alien liquid, catalyzing a dramatic physical transformation.

Unfortunately that’s where the plot stops being interesting and the whole film devolves into standard fugitive-trying-to-fix-the-situation chase/action movie but with exploding people and a mecha-suit.

It’s a spectacle on the screen, but I can’t say it’s a spectacular movie overall. Maybe I’m ignorant to any other apartheid allegories in the final two acts, but I didn’t see anything else that bothered to the explore the refugee story any further. The whole movie is undoubtedly and consistently about the value of “human” life, but it just plays its cards so wrong.

Sharlto Copley plays Wikus very well and genuinely through his whole arc; I can’t take that away from him. The CG is mostly above average but sometimes still looks like something made on a TV series budget.

I can’t recommend giving it a viewing, but nor can I call it a total waste, so nor can I recommend not seeing it.