Random Movie: District 9 (2009)

For some reason, this was a hard movie to watch. Not hard to watch as in terribly graphic or poorly made, but I watched the film over six days, each time falling asleep no matter if it was in the middle of the afternoon or 3 in the morning. This is not however an overall indication of the quality of the film, more an example of how I really like sleeping I suppose.

Released to theaters this past summer to critical praise, District 9 follows the existing and new denizens of Johannesburg, South Africa after an inoperable alien craft comes to rest over the city. Having no way to return home, over a million alien creatures, dubbed prawns by the locals, are rounded up in a fenced in series of shacks and tents. Twenty years later, crime has risen in the slum, the prawns are acting out against the humans, and the locals are demanding the alien residents be moved to another location. Enter Wikus Van De Merwe, middle management worker bee for MNU, a global weapons company that has been contracted to evict the aliens to a tent city over a hundred miles outside of the city.

That's the base line for the story and I feel giving more information would spoil the various twists and turns that the film takes over its runtime. Either I was not interested at the time of its release or the reviews and information I read did not delve into too many specifics, but as I sat down to watch the film, I had no idea what to expect other than the brief plot description that I gave you. And it really works better that way as the various shifts in narrative and the out-of-nowhere (but yet still realistic) plot developments shape District 9 into a movie full of twists and surprises.

As George Romero made popular in his zombie series (before the abysmal Diary of the Dead at least), District 9 features an underlying social commentary about the oppression and disdain the prawns endure while on Earth. While initially welcomed by the humans, the care-taking of the prawns became cumbersome with the rampant crime in District 9, the exploitation by Nigerians looking for weapons, and a lack of control for the different species. The obvious answer then is to send them away like unruly children where they won't bother the rest of the populace.

One the the standout aspects of the film was the budget at an estimated $30 million. While this is a ridiculous amount of money for you or I, with the average budget for a summer action movie of around $200 million, it is astonishing that a film of this caliber was made with so little. Almost all of the funds appear onscreen with the CGI prawns, looking more realistic than 90% of other CGI characters (I'm looking at you Jar-Jar Binks) and the subtle effects like the ship just hovering over Johannesburg in the background of numerous scenes without attention being drawn to it. Also of note was the performance of Sharlto Copley in our hero role. While some have decried his performance as enacting one emotion, nervousness, he was spot on for his character to be thrust into such an unexpected situation.

As the film was winding down, one of my biggest fears was the film would fall into the trap of the characters having a change of heart and helping out their fellow species for the ending to work. Fortunately, this did not happen. Almost all of the characters, from Wikus to the alien protagonist Christopher, are working for their own purposes. While sometimes there was overlap between the goals, Wikus and Christopher ultimately had different objectives and it was rather refreshing to see that play out throughout the film consistently instead of a cliched moment of realization at the end.

All together, District 9 had many things going for it from a strong short story as a basis, the great Peter Jackson producing, and an excess of creativity instead of money to throw at the end result. As such, District 9 was a fine movie (and an very expensive one-day rental at that) and is now appropriately placed in the Top 250 of IMDb.