Movie review: District 9

by John P. Meyer

The trailer for District 9 makes it look like a retread of Alien Nation, that memorable (?) 1988 sci-fi film which spawned an actually more entertaining and thoughtful TV series about a population of alien beings who find themselves stranded on Earth, attempting to integrate into human melting pot of southern California.

Turns out there's some justification for this comparison, but District 9 ends up being different in several key ways. Firstly, the alien mother ship disgorges its million-some-odd occupants in Johannesburg, South Africa (as opposed to Los Angeles, U.S.A); they are forcefully confined to a slum-like township, leading to obvious apartheid-based comparisons. Secondly, the aliens in District 9 bear no resemblance whatsoever to humans -- unlike the Newcomers of Alien Nation, who could pass for people if you overlooked their inflated skulls and leopard-like spots.

The District 9 critters (referred to as "prawns") are more like oversized, bipedal arthropods -- with big, expressive eyes (a rather disconcerting feature). Their numerous, alarmingly-articulated appendages add an element of queasiness to the viewing experience that never entirely dissipates. As noted in part 2 of our interview with director Neill Blomkamp, the fantastic creature effects are so well integrated into the footage that it's difficult to tell where they end and the actual cinematography begins.

District 9 (about the first hour of it, at least) is presented mostly in documentary fashion, with the visuals derived from the lenses of various hand-held video cameras, helicopter viewing platforms, and date/time encoded security cams. There are also snippets of interviews with expert consultants and journalists interspersed throughout. This approach gives the whole thing a distinctly Cloverfield-like air.

The central character of our narrative is Wikus Van De Merwe (acting Newcomer -- er, I mean newcomer -- Sharlto Copley, here displaying a range of expression that many acting veterans never achieve). Wikus is a lead administrator for MNU, the multi-national conglomerate charged with overseeing prawn affairs. They are also, by the way, international arms manufacturers with a profit-motive interest in making alien weapons technology work -- after 28 years, there's been no progress in discovering how to fire an arc gun. (HINT: it takes a prawn paw to shoot a prawn gun.)

When we first meet him, Wikus is an eminently practical company man, climbing the corporate ladder by enforcing MNU policy to the letter. In an early scene, he narrates (with gleeful enthusiasm) the flaming destruction of a hidden prawn nursery. To him, the burning of the proscribed alien hatchlings is nothing more than S.O.P. -- they're only prawns, after all.

It's when Wikus and his heavily-armed work crews storm the slum to begin the process of eviction (so the prawns can be relocated to a more secure facility) that events take a turn toward the gut-wrenchingly disconcerting: Wikus picks up a cylindrical canister in an abandoned prawn workshop and it sprays him in the face with a blast of fluid, beginning a process that will eventually turn him into the literal embodiment of a metaphorical work by Kafka. Unless, that is, he can escape from his amoral corporate captors and ally himself with the only individual on the planet who can offer a solution to his problem.

(Another problem: the specified individual isn't human.)

Moviegoers have seldom encountered a more cleverly conceived, socially-resonant alternate realilty. Cat food becomes a precious trade commodity; criminal gangs infiltrate the township to reap black market profits; Photoshopped images of interspecies sexcapades are used to criminalize (and -- um -- alienate) a key character. And hovering over it all, like a ghostly floating mountain, is the massive alien mothership -- parked for decades in midair over the skies of Jo'burg.

Cloaked within District 9's spectacular effects and chitin-biting adventure lurks a surprisingly effective morality tale that lifts the film from outstanding creature-feature fare to the level of something distinctly more profound: what delicious irony that it takes an injection of alien DNA for Wikus to fully discover his own humanity.

The real magic of this movie is that we -- along with Wikus -- eventually find ourselves sympathizing with the monsters. And that, my friends, is no mean trick.

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