District 9 (2009) - Directed by Neil Blomkamp

Reviewed by Zimmer F


FREEDOM FOR PRAWNS!!!

In a time were we are constantly faced with the refugee issue in our real lives. Neill Blomkamps interesting sci-fi, documentary style film explores, with a mix of pure camp humour, as well as touching humanistic insight, the issue of immigration (especially apartheid) set in modern South Africa.

The film centres on the results of an event happening in Johannesburg, when a giant Alien spaceship arrives in modern South Africa, carrying over a million alien inhabitants (named by the humans as 'prawns).

The story follows 20 years on from this 'event', and sees our anti-hero
Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a government employee ,put in charge of evicting the 'prawns' from the grimy, shanty town ghetto district known as 'District 9'. Wikus finds himself exposed to an alien chemical, which starts to slowly turn him into a hybrid of one of the aliens he is hunting down, and finds himself on the run from the evil  MNU corporation that he once worked for.

The documentary style footage, mixed with fake and real news footage, home videos and interviews adds to the overall tone of the film. It starts off firmly tongue in cheek, comical, with the bumbling Wikus and his team entering District 9 on a mission to 'clean up' the crime ridden area. It moves on to a darker and more cruel view of modern day racism and segregation / ghettoism, but still manages to tackle these serious issues whilst retaining it's humour.

Along with the obvious apartheid like allegory, the fims sci-fi action really comes into play in the latter parts of the film. The continuing transformation of Wikus into 'Prawn' allows the now hunted Wikus from grabbing hold of some of the aliens extremely advanced and lethal weaponry (these can only be used with alien DNA), and blasting his way, often gorilly, through the MNU soldiers hunting him down.

District 9 is a fantastically original film, in a genre which has much needed a real injection of originality. With Blomkamp's clever use of documentary style fiming,  real humour mixed with modern cruelty, District 9 is a film which deserves to be seen and enjoyed.

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