Review: District Nine

As I left the cinema having watched District Nine the woman behind told her partner “I’ve never been to a film that made me want to puke and cry at the same time.” I have sympathy with her but she’d clearly not seen Tim Burton’s atrocity of a remake of Planet of the Apes. Worst – film – ever.

However, when it comes to District Nine we have a powerful film, well executed and inventively playful with what must now be a genre of ‘alien space juggernaut hovering overhead as the city beneath trembles’.

The film sees a host of strange looking alien creatures arrive, bedraggled and helpless, at Johannesburg where the locals welcome them with the open arms of those who know the whole world is watching.

They might take the aliens in but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to house them in anything but shanty town conditions of ‘District Nine’ an obvious echo of the infamous episode in ‘District Six’ where the apartheid regime ethnically cleansed an entire part of the city, but let’s get back to the film.

Lead actor, Sharlto Copley, does an incredible job in his role as fascist scum bag, who through some unfortunate circumstances begins to sympathise with the aliens. We see the casual brutality of otherwise normal seeming men against those who they see as a species apart from themselves, less than animals, simply a problem that has to be managed in the most efficient way possible.

I wont go into detail for those yet to see the film but while there is a substantial amount of gore and violence (hence the puke remark) it is by no means a slasher / effects film. There is a genuine core narrative to the film that is well worth following.

It is very effective as a pulling apart of racism, authoritarianism and the dehumanisation of others. It’s also a bloody great sci-fi film with lots of cool aliens and stuff. As long as you have a strong stomach you will, like me, give the film five stars.