Review: District 9

Millions of crustacean-like aliens land in South Africa over twenty years ago, and are kept to a closed-off part of Johannesburg as refugees. Now the government wants to move these ‘prawns’ (as they are disparagingly called for rather obvious reasons) from their slum-like area of District 9 to a remote new area, in order to make the local humans happy (Besides, it’s crowded enough already, right?). This new area is to be imaginatively called District 10, and seems like it will operate as a sort of concentration camp. In charge of this relocation is the Multi-National United Corporation, with nerdy bureaucrat Wikus (Sharlto Copley) as their main field operative. Needless to say, the aliens aren’t happy with Wikus knocking at their doors, and as a scuffle ensues, Wikus comes into contact with a mysterious black liquid that begins changes in him that see him going on the run from the very people who employ him, and having to rely on his supposed enemy for assistance. The latter comes in the form of a ‘Prawn’ somewhat implausibly named Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope) and his cute little son CJ, who begin to seem a whole lot less hostile to Wikus than his own kind.

 

Financially backed by New Zealand’s Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy), this 2009 South African mockumentary from debut writer-director Neill Blomkamp, is an overrated, overblown, wholly disappointing and deadly dull film. In fact, it might just be the worst Oscar-nominee for Best Picture that I have ever seen (And I’ve seen quite a few clunkers). You’re all nuts, this film sucks.

 

Mixing alien invasion with an Apartheid satire, the film thinks it’s clever and profound, but instead is foolish, insulting and at best, it’s a 5 minute idea disastrously stretched to feature-length. It might’ve worked as an “SNL” sketch, but as a film it is incredibly stupid, unoriginal (“Enemy Mine”, “Alien Nation”, “Iron Man”, and Paul Verhoeven all spring to mind), and agonisingly uninteresting. There’s just not enough material here for a whole film, let alone a whole film worth watching given how incredibly unsubtle the whole thing is. It’s no surprise to learn that the idea original came from a short film by Blomkamp, and that is perhaps where it was best kept (I haven’t seen the short).

 

The aliens are dopey and the human interrogation scenes are stupid and agonisingly dull. It’s all talk, and none of it is remotely smart or funny. In fact, it’s appallingly heavy-handed, and in the case of the subtitled ‘Prawn’ dialogue, completely infantile and unfunny, especially during the door-to-door scenes. ‘Prawns’ make for especially useless alien creatures because they have no personality or charisma. I come back to the argument I always make about aliens; Why would they look so recognisable as something like crustaceans? It seems so unimaginative to me. Surely aliens, if they existed, would look completely unlike anything recognisable to humans. It’s pompous to think otherwise. We don’t even really find out that much about them, so why the hell should I care about their plight? Even a satire needs to have character depth to some extent, surely. Meanwhile, aside from the hideous Apartheid comparison, the notion of treating aliens as simply a refugee problem is frankly, moronic and simplistic. There’s just no credibility to that at all. For starters, it assumes aliens are going to be weaker than us so that we can put them in a second class status to us. If aliens exist and are hostile, I reckon aliens would exterminate us before we can blink!

 

The FX, supposedly CGI, looked like rubber suits to me, and whilst that might suggest an effective solidity, they are ultimately a failure. This is because, CGI or rubber, they certainly don’t look real, and that’s supposed to be the intent, surely, to appear real. They looked awfully cheap at times, if you ask me. And don’t even get me started on the depiction of Nigerians as opportunistic, voodoo-practicing savages...you don’t want me to get into that. I guess I could praise the camerawork of Trent Opaloch, for being sturdier than most handheld work, it’s certainly not as nausea-inducing as I was expecting. Unfortunately, Mr. Opaloch overdoes it with the zoom, to a totally unnecessary degree. Copley’s performance is fine (especially for someone who hadn’t appeared in movies before), but his character isn’t funny at all, and most certainly isn’t likeable. I will admit that the film adopts a neat twist in the second half involving Copley, that makes it marginally more tolerable, including the hilarious line referring to Copley’s dilemma; (****SPOILER WARNING****) ‘Wikus van de Merwe was recently apprehended....after prolonged sexual activity with aliens in District 9’ (****END SPOILER****). But it’s not nearly enough, and it certainly doesn’t make up for his ugly behaviour up to that point.

 

This is an awful film, which needed a total re-write to say the least. I’m all for social commentary and genre mixing, but did we really need a science-fiction satire on Apartheid? It’s such a foul concept, if you ask me, and Blomkamp isn’t as clever or funny as say Mel Brooks (“The Producers”, with its ‘Springtime for Hitler’ musical), in order to get away with it. An apartheid mockumentary with space prawns? Really? And at the end, one has to ask; What the hell was the point? What exactly is resolved?

 

I’m utterly gobsmacked at the lauding this film received from critics, audiences, and the Academy. What am I missing? Man’s inhumanity towards prawns? I can live with the prawn-haters, thanks. Maybe you’re one of the many who loves this film, I’m perfectly happy being one of the few who are right. The screenplay by the director and Terri Tatchell, most astonishingly, was Oscar-nominated. Shame on the Academy, this screenplay is terribly thin.

 

Rating: D