Thirty Great Movies You've Probably Never Seen: District 9

Year:  2009

Director:  Neill Blomkamp

I’m going to complete this series with a somewhat unusual choice:  A brand-new movie.  If you haven’t seen it, the only reason you have “Probably Never Seen It” is that it was just released.

Get ready for hyperbole and superlatives, because this movie knocked me flat on my ass.  This movie does so many things right, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

I’ll leap right into the deep end of the pool here.  District 9 may be the best main stream movie I’ve seen since Fargo.  It’s that good.

It tells the story, in a documentary-like style, of a large population of aliens who were rescued by humans when their gigantic mothership became inert after suddenly appearing over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.  The creatures, nicknamed “prawns,” (which is kind, believe me, these guys are pretty unattractive) are stuffed into a refugee camp which quickly degenerates into a slum.

Oh, and by the way, the movie begins 28 years after this happened.  Through the years, the alien ghetto become a more and more desperate place, creating more and more fear, violence and opportunism between the two species.  Further complicating the situation is the fact that the camp is “maintained” by a very authoritative multinational munitions company named MNU.  We soon learn that MNU’s interest is in developing alien-based weaponry.

The main action of the film takes place when a forced evacuation is scheduled, the intent being to move the population of aliens (now numbering 1.8 million!) to a new camp far out of the city.  The head of this project is a chirpy middle-management type named Wikus Van De Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley).  He just happens to be married to the daughter of a big boss at MNU and he first comes across as full of more smiles than brains. 

He takes a team of escorts and heads into District 9 on the big day to begin handing out 24-hour eviction notices (which are probably illegal) to the aliens. 

This triggers a series of events that places Wikus into the center of a titanic inter-species conflict.  I don’t want to spoil any more of the plot, because this is one of those movies which constantly confounds your expectations about where it is going.

As I quietly watched this movie, I kept muttering “Wow” to myself.  Young writer/director Neill Blomkamp has created a world which is stunningly believable and utterly mesmerizing.  We’re lucky that he came to the attention of Peter Jackson, who served as producer for the movie.

One of the biggest triumphs of the picture is the performance of Sharlto Copley.  Amazingly, he isn’t an actor.  He’s a producer and director who, through his long professional relationship with Blomkamp and the fact that he got pushed into a role in short film that District 9 is based on, astonishingly found himself starring in a major movie.  I hope the Academy Awards remember how good he was when the nominations come out.

The special effects are also jaw-dropping, and that’s not easy to do in this jaded era.  They were largely produced by the Weta Workshop, who did the effects for The Lord of the Rings.  I couldn’t believe it when I learned that almost all of the aliens were CGI.  That’s how real they seem.

I would compare this movie to Star Wars, Aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Blair Witch Project and even City of God.  Yeah, it’s that good.  It’s easily the best film I’ve seen this year and I’ll be very surprised if I see a better movie before the year is out. 

You need to race to the movie theater and see the masterpiece that is District 9. 

[Thirty Day Hub Challenge #30]