District 9 (2009)

Continuing with the theme of playing catch-up with all the movies I missed or neglected to see in 2009, I finally watched District 9 last night.

The events of the film, shown in mock-documentary style, then switching into 'real-time' as the film progresses, take place in Johannesburg, South Africa in the early 1980's - where an enormous alien spacecraft has arrived, idled and remains floating in the air over the city. After three months, a team is sent to break into the ship and over a million arthropod-like extraterrestrials are found, sick, languishing and leaderless. The aliens, the later referred to as "prawns" are brought down and set up in military-enforced quarters which then becomes the slums known as District 9. As tensions between the aliens and humans escalate over the next 20 years, measures to relocate the aliens outside of Johannesburg in 'District 10' are made, under the management of Multinational United (MNU) a defense technology company hired by the South African government.

MNU sends Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley, who apparently never acted until this role), a bumbling, mild-mannered cubicle rat-turned field operative, to handle the serving of eviction notices to the aliens in District 9, as well as confiscated any illegal weapons/materials in the process. The entire time, Wikus shows he is knowledgeable about the alien race, but cares little in regards to their rights or well-being. During an altercation with one alien refusing to cooperate with MNU, Wikus searches his shack and, finding a metal canister, accidentally sprays himself with a black liquid found within. After the alien throws Wikus, breaking his arm, it is dispatched, but Wikus' health rapidly begins to deteriorate, as he begins vomiting and secreting a black fluid from his nostrils. After collapsing and awakening in the emergency room, it is discovered that his broken arm has mutated into the appendages of an alien. MNU seizes Wikus and tests his operability of the alien weapons, which can only be handled by those with alien DNA. As the lab prepares Wikus for vivisection, he panics and escapes to the safest place he can think of - back to the slums in District 9.

That's only the first half of the film, which takes a long time to set up, and since this is getting rather long-winded, I'll just jot down the rest of my thoughts. The premise of the story is great - the arrival of an alien race on Earth, the ensuing xenophobia and misunderstanding, etc. sets up the tone of the film, but I found the story to be a little lacking of character development. Wikus goes from only caring about finding a way up to the mother ship to return to his whole human self, to sacrificing his chance to go up for one of the aliens he has allied with/befriended when it was in trouble, in about the span of a minute. The desperation of his plight influences most of his actions then all of a sudden a burst of humanity shines through a little too late into the film to make me appreciate it. The MNU operatives are very two-dimensional, as they're only shown as trained soldiers-turned killers who 'can't believe they get paid to do their job.' More nuance in all of the characters would have been nice, so in general I felt more for the main alien characters whose first intention throughout the story was to go back to the mother ship, back to their planet, to get help and save their people. Still, the film stuck with me enough so that in the case District 10 is released, I'll definitely be going to see that to find out what happens next/happened before.