Review of District 9 (2009) by Bryce I — 12 Apr 2015

'District 9' might not have the most original story, it was even used in another big film, 'Avatar', in the same year, but it is all about the execution and this film adds a lot of new things to the already existing formula. The story follows a very predictable arc where the main person in charge has something happen to him where he then realises how bad we treat the oppressed and then he helps them out and then everything is supposed to be happy, sure. I pretty much knew everything that was going to happen from the moment it started, but that doesn't mean that it still isn't watchable and like I said, new things have been added, the unique design of the aliens for starters, who have a robot-like quality about them and are animated very well. The visual effects of this film are outstanding and what was done with a small budget is quite incredible, even the smallest of things like something that happens to Sharlto Copley's fingernail looks impressive and out of everything, that made my stomach churn the most. The violence in this film is so satisfying to watch and the film, overall, plays to our emotions pretty well. Like usual with this story, there is the generic military guy who doesn't care about anything except killing what's in the way and while it is true that people like that would be chosen for that job, it still doesn't make it any less of a cliché; there's even a scene where he walks slowly to the camera with dust moving around with the hero feebly crawling away and that was just too much. Sharlto Copley gives an outstanding feature film debut and he completely nails it, it's Oscar worthy. The filmmaking is great, the cinematography is gorgeous and I've already spoken about the visual effects, there were some jump cuts that seemed weird at first but they're used a little more often near the end and the soundtrack is great.

They explain in the film why the aliens are here but I think it is a pretty weak reason; they're just here because they are. I also didn't really understand how they could communicate with one another; just because you're exposed to someone for a long period of time doesn't mean you'll understand them. At one point one of the aliens says, 'why are we being evicted?' And Copley's character just explains what the form is called so that signalled to me that they didn't understand each other perfectly, which makes sense, but a problem like that never happens again. It did make me laugh how they could be 'evicted' what are they guilty of? Not paying the rent? But it all plays out soon after in a smart way, even though I don't know why they pretended to care when they could have just forced them to relocate. I didn't like the initial use of the documentary style of the film that it uses from time to time and it isn't because I thought it didn't fit, it's because it just serves as an exposition dump for the start of our story. True, it works effectively and gets everything out there that we need to know early on but it isn't the best of ways to execute story; it's used later on at times and some think that it was just used to keep with consistency. Another small issue I have is that I don't think humans would just confine aliens to live in a slum and have that be that, humans are all about exploring and going into space and all of that stuff, so, what? They just gave up on talking to the aliens? Sure, I guess we'd experiment on a few of them because we're like that and we do see some experimentation going on in this film but we could learn so much if we just talked to them. I understand what the aliens are trying to represent here but it goes against human logic. There are more complaints about the logical side of everything that goes on in this film but everyone else has already said them. There was a gun battle in a room at one point and I'm surprised the Prawn didn't get shot after standing out in the open and I thought he lied about trying to help Copley's character just to get what he want and while there are a few nice plot twists, that wasn't one of them. There was that usual line where the human character is need of the aliens' assistance and he gets it and they say something like, 'oh I knew you weren't all bad' and it did seem like he was just using them to get what he wanted but they do actually develop a very good relationship. The alien characters were actually quite nice and seeing an alien single father was something new. I thought we'd see Copley's character try to cut his arm off at one point but he just gives up after only doing a little bit and he probably should have told those trying to get his arm that it was the black liquid instead of just saying, 'it won't work', because just saying, 'it won't work' won't work.

The film has a rather ambiguous end, especially with the main character and ends in a thought provoking way, much like the original short film. I feel like the short film left more of an impact, it is only around 5 minutes long but because of how everything is filmed, it's more eerie. The design of the aliens looks more threatening as well, they block out the eyes and while it makes sense stylistically it was probably done to save money as well. I did like the film but it isn't revolutionary or blazingly original because the story is as old as time and again it was even used in the same year in 'Avatar', and like that film, seems to get lots of special attention just because it is to do with aliens. Not to discredit the film as it has amazing technicals and is very watchable and enjoyable, it also really gives weight to the situations instead of just expecting us to care about the characters just because they're on screen and overall I was very invested. I think peoples' expectations played a part as well, most seem to have expected one thing and then got something completely unexpected but Blomkamp spent that 30 million that he given very well indeed and it's another film off the list.