District 9

Watch: District 9

8/14/20091h 52m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ You are not welcome here. ~

Overview:

Thirty years ago, aliens arrive on Earth. Not to conquer or give aid, but to find refuge from their dying planet. Separated from humans in a South African area called District 9, the aliens are managed by Multi-National United, which is unconcerned with the aliens' welfare but will do anything to master their advanced technology. When a company field agent contracts a mysterious virus that begins to alter his DNA, there is only one place he can hide: District 9.

Director:

Neill Blomkamp

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$30,000,000.00

Revenue:

$210,888,950.00

Key words:

street gang
government
genetics
slum
mutation
dystopia
transformation
south africa
johannesburg, south africa
satire
mockumentary
alien
prawn
alternate history
racism
metamorphosis
xenophobia
speculative
internment camp
alien technology
segregation
private military company
based on short
grand
provocative
suspenseful
critical
intense

Cast

Sharlto Copley

~ as ~

Wikus van de Merwe

Jason Cope

~ as ~

Christopher Johnson / Grey Bradnam / Trent

Nathalie Boltt

~ as ~

Sarah Livingstone - Sociologist

Sylvaine Strike

~ as ~

Dr Katrina McKenzie

Elizabeth Mkandawie

~ as ~

Interviewee

John Sumner

~ as ~

Les Feldman - MIL Engineer

William Allen Young

~ as ~

Dirk Michaels

Nick Blake

~ as ~

Francois Moraneu - CIV Engineer Team

Greg Melvill-Smith

~ as ~

Interviewer

Robert Hobbs

~ as ~

Ross Pienaar

View full cast & crew

Reviews (5)

t
talisencrw
Written 8 year(s) ago
9
This was an outstanding debut by the New Zealander Blomkamp. Consistently enthralling and keeping one at the edge of his seat. THIS is a recent film, like 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World', that should have spawned sequels. Much better than his follow-up, 'Elysium' (I haven't watched any others he's made since; hope he doesn't end up a cinematic one-trick pony like M. Night Shyamalan...).
Kamurai
Written 4 year(s) ago
9
Great watch, will watch again, and highly recommended.

This has a wonderfully exciting premise: alien refugees on Terra, how Terrans react and how the aliens react. The premise, as delivered, has some odd holes in though: it's specified that all of the crew have died, mysteriously, and no one knows how to operate the ship, but it's been in the air for some time. The idea of gravity alone should have motivated Johannesburg to evacuate, but their government interaction seems decidedly weak.

The advantage of setting the story in South Africa, for an American audience, is that it's a very capitalistic society where they speak chiefly English: it's very similar to being set in Mexico and using Mexican Cartels instead of Nigerian gangs.

So if we accept that we haven't been able to extract an incident report, that we're not able to move the ship, and none of the xenos can move the ship, then the premise includes that one xenos knows what to do. One would think that he just talks to someone and he gets all his people off planet, but since he's smart enough to do what he's been doing for 20 years, then he knows not to trust anyone. But this self-serving principle is key to understanding character motivations going forward.

The writing in this is so good, along with the effects, and performance delivery. As Vickis deals with his transformation, it prompts so many philosophical questions of what it is to be a person / human / xenos, a citizen, a government agent. It also sort of resembles a gangsta / heist movie at parts, as opposed to a anti-government escapee.

If any of the deep stuff worried you, then be at ease that this movie has plenty of explosions, gunfire and sci-fi goodness. It's also filled with some silly cliches that serve the points of the story, but there are several points in this movie that I have to shake my head at. The motivations don't make sense unless you're reminded that everyone, including the protagonists, are (forced) in a self-serving mindset and it's about what they can do for themselves, even when working together with the contrast being, of course, that only when anyone is cooperating that anyone gets anywhere.

This is such a great watch, and if you like sci-fi styled stuff, and don't mind the South African setting ("Chappie" is another one), then definitely give this a watch.
AstroNoud
Written 3 year(s) ago
9
A gritty and original story that is as entertaining as thought-provoking, combining xenophobic satire and political allegory with raucous action.

8/10
Filipe Manuel Neto
Written 1 year(s) ago
5
For a low-budget film, it's a good effort.

I'm not a big fan of films about aliens, so the film won't be my cup of tea at all. However, that didn't stop me from seeing it, and appreciating what's good about it. Without a colossal budget or a powerful studio, director Neill Blomkamp gives us an intelligent and technically impactful film.

In fact, it is in the most technical details that I felt impressed by the film: we have extraordinary cinematography, with magnificent light and colors. The effects and CGI used are very good and prove that you don't need an endless bag of money to get a good result. The ship is strange enough and the aliens are credible enough, with a bizarre but elaborate and well-made appearance, and the way they speak is, at the same time, expressive and enigmatic. Much of the film was filmed in a real South African slum, and it is difficult to see that human beings are still living in such an environment.

The director bet on little-known actors, and this gives some additional credibility to the list of characters that were created here. Sharlto Copley is perhaps the easiest to recognize, as he has worked on some of the most widely circulated productions. Here, he is able to, at least, give us a worthy performance without major flaws... the only colossal flaw is not the actor's fault, but the script's, which gave his character a name very prone to jokes and puns in my mother tongue (I think French and even Spanish speakers will also understand): Wicus van de Merwe.

The film's biggest problem is the weakness of the script. It seems to me that the film attempted a kind of social criticism by placing, instead of human people, strange aliens in that filthy slum. Is the film a sharp criticism of the way we discriminate and segregate those we consider inferior or different from us? If so, I understand, but perhaps I was one of the few to understand. It's the only explanation for the way the film begins: instead of taking sick aliens to a laboratory and spending decades studying them in depth, are we going to put them in a filthy slum? It doesn't make any sense to me.
CinemaSerf
Written 2 week(s) ago
7
The first twenty minutes or so of this is presented as if it were a documentary and with information whizzing about all over the place and tiny onscreen graphics attempting to set the scene, I found it really quite annoying. I was tempted to just give up, but gladly I didn’t because once it gets going it’s really quite good. Perhaps aliens have been watching the telly over the years so this time they have decided to skip the expected military welcome they’ve always received in the USA and gone to South Africa. Their mother ship parks itself above Johannesburg bearing a cargo of critters (they bear quite a resemblance to Arnie’s pals in “Predator”) who are looking for somewhere to live. The solution? Well that’s the favela-style shanty town called “District 9” where they are left in an almost feral squalor to fend for themselves. What proves to be of far more interest to humanity is their isomorphic weaponry, and when we discover a rather brutal way of getting round that security feature then things become even more perilous for the visitors. Determined to relocate the million-odd population, it falls to the nominally civilian process led by “Wikus” (Sharlto Copley) to organise their movement, but that never goes smoothly and along the way he becomes infected with a fluid that appears to be turning him into one of them! Now shunned by his own people and pursued by some weaponising mercenaries, he must rely on the “prawns” if he is to survive, or find any sort of cure. Once we’ve navigated the introductory fallow period, this picks up the pace entertainingly with a decent effort from Copley augmenting some really quite convincing visuals set in a glorified ghetto that provides as much a social commentary of how they are treated as it does an environment for the more traditional video-game elements of the story. At times it asks us whom is the more human and though set in the genre of sci-fi, asks quite poignant questions about mass migration that could apply much closer to home. Stick with it, it’s worth a watch.