Neill Blomkamp's District 9: Movie Review

Oh god. Not another addition to the alien apartheid genre.

"District 9", the feature film debut of director Neill Blomkamp, is perhaps the last major spectacle the summer has to offer after the fog of "Transformers 2" and "GI Joe" has cleared. Because of it's viral marketing and a full embrace by the world's fanboys, this low-budget blockbuster has cemented itself as one of the summer's biggest success stories. But is it any good?

Set in an alternate reality, the premise is a winner: a gigantic alien mothership has inexplicably parked over Johannesburg, South Africa. With little movement coming from the craft, human curiosity eventually leads man to drill their way in. Inside, they find a population of almost a million shrimp-like creatures, slender and standing about seven feet tall. They are malnourished and frightened. The humans, in an act of "good will", remove the aliens from the craft and place them in a refuge camp known as District 9. It's not long before the camp is a slum.

The "prawn", a name they've been given due to their similarities to bottom-feeding crustaceans, are exploited from all sides. The white soldiers harass them, the Nigerian gangsters traffic their cat-food (the prawn's drug du jour) and even prey upon them, and citizens of nearby villages complain that too much money is being spent to keep them here.

A company called MNU, Multi-National United, proposes to resettle the aliens in an enclosed space not unlike a concentration camp. The man responsible for handing out the eviction notices is our soon-to-be hero, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), the son-in-law of the MNU head honcho.

The allegorical nature of "District 9" makes no attempts to be subtle. It beats you over the head with the xenophobia, the corporate greed, the exploitation of the alien creatures. In fact, i'd be surprised if anyone, regardless of their level of education, could have left the movie without recalling apartheid or the holocaust.

Copley makes a likable lead despite coming off as little more than a parody of "The Office"'s David Brent in the first act. But the real star of the film is, of course, the special effects - the seamless blending of these creatures into a natural environment alongside humans is quite impressive.

Despite the success of the first half of the film, however, "District 9" seems content to settle for standard Blockbuster fare towards it's end. One action sequence is great, and even two - but half an hour of exploding heads, giant robots, and alien weaponry simply exhausted me. Because the xenophobia is left abandoned, by the end I felt Johannesburg was more of a gimmicked setting than the beginnings of an actual inspired social message.

While the final act becomes tedious, I don't want to underrate the wonderful ninety minutes that precede it. It's an original vision, a film that reminded me in some ways of "28 Days Later" as a groundbreaking new spin on a tired genre. The relentless action near the end was a bit of a bore, but it's not enough to completely handicap what is otherwise a very good film.