CAST: Jason Cope - Christopher Johnson
Sharlto Copley - Wikus van de Merwe

PLOT: An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology.


This movie is brilliant. I don't know what else to say. I ate this movie up like the prawns ate up the cat food. It was beautifully shot, beautifully written, and kept me continually guessing up to the end. I was sure this was going to end tragically for the protagonists, that was after I was sure they were going to escape.

The plot involves an extraterrestrial race that comes to Earth, their ship apparently listless, stopping over Johannesburg, South Africa. This is probably the one (ultimately easily overlooked) flaw in this movie, that it's never fully explained why the aliens couldn't use their own technology when they arrive, but we do get the point, humans take control and the 'prawns', as the race is called, is set aside in their own district in Johannesburg.

It's explained early on, in the documentary style opening of this movie, that District 9 is a haven of crime and a complete slum. The Nigerian underground seems to have as much control as any government organization, and the aliens seem to live by picking through trash heaps in and around the complex.

The plot is kicked off as the documentary opening follows Wikus van de Merwe, who has just been assigned the mission of moving the prawns from District 9 to a new district, located several hundred miles north of Johannesburg. We see the interactions with the aliens, we see how precarious the situation, how close District 9 is to a complete collapse of any authority.

While moving around the District, trying to get the prawns to sign the 'legal eviction' notices, he gets exposed to some biotechnology that 'causes his body to slowly transform into a prawn.

How the movie develops from there is beautifully done, revealing several layers and becoming more action packed as it reaches its final, strangely touching conclusion. The action sequences in this movie are all exciting and extremely successful. The director, despite what seems on the outside as a straight forward plot, really kept me guessing how it was going to end. Even the ending asks several questions, rather than being a full answer. There was nothing about this movie I didn't enjoy, not a single moment of it.

10 of 10, one possible flaw in the beginning doesn't stop this from being the best movie I've seen this (or last) year.