Alien Nation

District 9 is unlike anything you’ve
ever seen.

It’s weird, brilliant, brutal, and gorgeous. It’s inventive and
surprising and disarmingly unique, and it’s one of those too-rare films
that’s both relentlessly entertaining and also has something to say.
It’s the sort of story you won’t be able to stop thinking about
afterward, and, not to build it up too much or get embarrassingly
hyperbolic, but goddamn—in a whole lot of ways, this thing feels
like a game-changer.

The idea: Two decades ago, a massive ship entered Earth’s
atmosphere, gliding to a halt above South Africa. The appearance of the
craft—ominous, colossal, and truly, terrifyingly
alien—prefaced neither an Independence Day-style invasion
nor a heartwarming hug-fest with friendly ETs. The ship just sat
there, silent, hanging over Johannesburg, for months—until
humans clumsily sliced their way inside the hull and stumbled in, only
to discover squalor, pain, and sickness. Stranded, and with no way to
provide for themselves, the insectile aliens inside were taken down to
Johannesburg.

District 9 was intended to be a center for humanitarian
aid—but as time passed, it instead turned into a camp, and then
into a slum, which is when District 9 begins. Decades after our
first contact with an alien species, the impoverished extraterrestrials
live in filthy shacks behind coils of barbed wire, and the South
African government—sick of attempting to provide for them, sick
of trying to defend them from the humans who loathe them—has
turned over management of District 9 to a private corporation,
Multi-National United. MNU also happens to be “the second-largest
weapons manufacturer in the world,” and, believably enough, they have
little interest in the aliens’ welfare—but plenty of interest in
their technology. All of this makes it just a teensy bit awkward when
an officious, dimwitted MNU agent, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copely),
comes into contact with a strange substance—and is forced to seek
out one of District 9’s residents, an alien who’s been assigned the
very unalien name of Christopher Johnson.

The scope of District 9 is vast—there are stunning
images, astonishing special effects, and exhilarating action sequences
that in any other film would serve as climactic showcases. But despite
his film’s scale, South African-born writer/director Neill Blomkamp
keeps his handheld camera firmly at eye level, intent on telling an
extraordinary story through ordinary eyes. While Blomkamp’s striking
visuals and utterly convincing, insightful documentary style suggest
genius, neither his visual tricks nor the film’s sci-fi novelty are
focal points of the film—instead we watch Wikus, and we watch
Christopher, and we realize that while District 9 might feature
space aliens, Blomkamp and his cowriter Terri Tatchell are interested
in them as individuals rather than as special effects—and we,
too, become fascinated not with the aliens’ unfamiliar strangeness, but
rather what their presence here says about us. Throughout its too-brief
running time, District 9 can be, and is, many things—but
it never stops being extraordinary.