Review of District 9 (2009) by Dillinger P — 07 Aug 2015

Upon its release, District 9 was hailed as a landmark of modern day science fiction, riddled with social commentary, action and some extremely impressive effects work. First time director, Blomkamp, with a little help from his friend Peter Jackson, really came out of the gate running on this one, and it shows, even by todays standards.

However looking back at this wonderful film, although it has managed to still stand on its own feet, be more relevant than ever and still be a blast, some of the more intricate work that was done, to make this film feel more realistic, is now so hard to take seriously, due to the mockumentary and found footage style being widely exploited.

District 9's story is its strongest asset, Aliens have fled to earth, for what reason no one knows, their mother ship hovering over Johannesburg. The government soon find what are malnurished Aliens, nicknamed Prawns due to their appearance, barely living upon the ship.

The government decide to act, essentially moving all the aliens of the ship and into slums on the ground, in a section called district 9, where they are secluded from human society and kept in check. However after mass protest, the science division in charge MNU, send a team in to perform a mass eviction of alien life from district 9, led by family man Wikus.

As you may imagine it doesnt go quite to plan and soon District 9 becomes a battlefield of resistance, character finding and crazy Nigerian warlords, eating Aliens. The concept is brilliant and the story is fantastically original, resonating with how we, even today, as human beings react and treat other forms of culture and life.

It hits home, especially in light of the immigrant camps between the borders of the UK and the mass misconduct towards the Alien race is heartfelt and shocking. What this film secondly has up its sleeve is our protagonist Wikus, played by Sharlto Copley, who, much like the director, is making his debut in a feature length.

In fact Blomkamp only agreed to go ahead with this movie, if he was cast and for that we need to thank the powers that be for giving us such an immensely talented actor. The great aspect about Wikus is that he is not your conventional hero, in fact hes not a hero at all, and as the audience you really are conflicted over liking or hating the character.

He oozes the racial hatred and common perception of something different and Copley manages to play so much in the grey area, that our conventional feelings towards someone we should be rooting for are thrown straight out the window.

This film actually makes you think about Aliens and sympathize with them straight from the word go. Its powerful stuff, luckily here Jackson manages to inject some of his visual prowess and bring the Alien species to life.

And although computer generated, the way in which the animations are handled, both via the effects team and Blomkamp, is testament to how CGI should be handled, effectively not lazily. Its also great to see a wide variety of art direction here, the script clearly calls for something we can relate to, unlike other Alien efforts, this manages to pay homage to extra terrestrial movies, while injecting its own spin on the genre.

So having these 3 attributes, the story, the fantastic lead and the brilliant characterization of computer animated characters really makes the film stand out, unlike anything we had seen before and it also firmly cemented Blomkamp on the map.

What hurts the film, which I am finally seeing now, is just how unsure it is of what it wants to be. It wants to be a social commentary, it wants to be a technial attraction, it wants to be a mockumentary, it wants to be an action film and it wants to be a Sci-Fi classic, and sadly by juggling all of these different traits, it manages to do them all some justice, rather than solidly achieve one or the other.

It doesnt want to stick to the mockumentary style, changing it up half way in, however once it does, it continually strays back, time and time again, to CCTV footage, found footage and the documentary style it opens on.

It has a good pop at trying to be a social commentary and succeeds until it turns into a full of science fiction war effort. It's not that any of these ideas are bad, its just so muddled and weighed down by Blomkamp trying to do everything at once, that we just dont know what we want or what he wants by the end of the movie.

It's a shame because the action is handled fantastically, its tense, its bloody and viceral. The scientific aspect of it is fasinating, with the Alien technology being integrated expertly into the fray.

Looking back, District 9 was and still is a marvelous achievement for a first time director, its clear he has a lot to say and a lot of different interest, what hurts him and District 9 the most is his inability to pull back on the reigns, giving us a tighter and more focused entry.

District 9 is a film everyone should see, but its hype and status is slightly tarnished by time and I cant help but feel we may have got a bit ahead of ourselves upon its release.