District 9

Despite this movie supposedly being low budget with no-name actors and simple settings, I found it richer because of that. The graphics and special effects were right up there with blockbuster budget flicks. It was reminiscent of Cloverfield, but without the pretensious pretty people and the cookie-tossing camera jarring.

The story is about an alien species whose mothership becomes stranded over South Africa due to the crumlbing of their leadership ranks. Perhaps it was illness, dissension, or abandonment, the people of Africa just don’t know, but what they do know is it’s there. After months of trying to get into the ship, they finally succeed by drilling a hole into its side where they find the refugee aliens sick and dying from starvation and malnourishment. Because they are “worker-bees” they don’t seem to have the ability to think for themselves or be able to work the equipment.

A government agency is formed to handle the species and quarantine them into concentration-camp like slums not unlike the Korean work camps of the US. Despair follows and tensions mount over two decades as clashes between the aliens and humans drive the government to create new camps farther away from civilization for the aliens.

The real story takes place when the eviction move occurs and one simple, underestimated man becomes the salvation for the aliens through a hapless discovery.  He finds himself torn between the world he once knew and the one he was destined for. Sounds campy, right? It’s anything but. Tense moments, high emotions, and the basic human instinct to survive in an ugly ruthless manner make it almost look like the aliens possess more humanity than we do.

There’s more than just a physical transformation of Wicus, the pasty, office-dwelling, insignificant man bullied by his father-in-law who is the director of his department. He realizes that doing things right doesn’t necessarily mean that doing the right thing.

In the end, one asks just who had delivered who from evil in an action-packed flurry of alien technology, corrupt governments, cruel slums and abandonment.