When an Alien spaceship crash lands outside the city of Johannesburg and leaves its crew of over 1 million stranded, the government takes action and decides to keep them in away from humans in a nearby slum, christened District 9. Whilst in charge of a new relocation programme, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is exposed to alien chemicals and rapidly begins mutating into one of the new 2nd class citizens. Now he has to run and hide in the one place he might be safe.
Another alien invasion film with a difference, if only because it isn't set in New York or Texas. And, as a change of pace, the Aliens are not going around dominating the weaker human forces, but are stuck in a South African slum: a rather clever difference in my opinion. Copley's performance is very good, and the special effects and make up artists did a fantastic job on his mutation. The cinematography is another clever change as half the film is made as a documentary rather than a pure sci fi film
That being said, there is not a lot about this film one could like. Unless one likes a hefty amount of gore - most of the narrative is given over to intense, violent and often sickening scenes that would make Jason Vorheese proud. And even when people aren;t getting blown up with alien weapons, there is still a lot of really grim, dark images that reflect some of the bad history of South Africa. If it were just this fact alone that was poor, the film might be bearable. Unfortunately the story line, despite being slightly different is not overly entertaining. The acting from the rest of the cast is poor to say the least, and the creators went over the top with x-box level special effects. But for me the most glaring problem is that the humans can automatically understand the aliens despite no previous explanation about how that happened.
District 9 only gets a 4 out of 10 from me.
