Film Review: District 9

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp 2009, stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and Robert Hobbs. It’s rated R for bloody violence and lots of language. The Reviewers rating is 8.4 stars out of 10 and has 112 minutes runtime. District 9’s genre is a mixture between action, sci-fi, thriller and drama.

District 9 begins as a documentary of the event(s) that have happen since an alien ship mysteriously appears hovering over South Africa. After three months the humans break into it and found a huge group of aliens malnourished and ill. Feeling obliged, the humans rescue them and had an aid group help them. The area in which they put the aliens, district 9, became militarized and turned into slumps. The Nigerians do not want the “prawns” (derogatory term used for the non-humans) there. An MNU field operative named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) was put in charge of the operation to move 1.8 million aliens to a new District 10 camp located 240 km from Johannesburg, requiring signatures from the prawns. Meanwhile a prawn, Christopher Johnson, made a device that contains fuel for the mother ship that took him 20 years to make. Wikus finds it and gets exposed to a liquid. Through the movie he slowly turns into a prawn and is running away from the government who found out he was half prawn and can operate the weapons prawns make that humans cannot use.

I enjoyed District 9 and highly recommend it. It is about man vs. non-human and the prejudice between them. The director did an excellent job in casting actors and the set up in cameras through out the movie. The story seemed real and the actors did a great job. Sharlto Copley, the main male role, played his part fantastic and really made his character right through his acting. The movie makes you think and is not predictable, even after the movie, your still thinking. I like movies that make you think and leave room for your imagination. I do not enjoy a movie that gives you a story and only that. I like to use my imagination as well. District 9 could have been better with less swearing. Using the ‘F’ word in every other sentence was not needed. But as far as the acting and story, I rate this movie a 9.5 out of 10.