“District 9”

Rated R: for bloody violence and pervasive language

 

“District 9,” produced by Peter Jackson, is no romp about the shires with the Hobbits.

Instead it is a hybrid between a faux-documentary and a diesel-fueled science fiction/horror flick. It is about an alien ship that stalls above the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. The humans segregate the aliens in a slum, surrounded by trash, where they live in shacks made of scrap wood and tin. The creatures look like cockroaches to me, but resemble prawns to the locals in the film. In fact the people of Johannesburg call these beings “prawns,” which we can conclude is a derisive term. These aliens are not only ugly but they behave rather badly. They tear things up, eat rubber tires, and are entertained by burning their own shacks and derailing trains.

The government decides to move them far away from the city to a resettlement camp. The government big shot gives this monumental task to his dull-witted son-in-law named Wikus van der Merwe (brilliantly played by unknown Sharlto Copley). Wikus is a nerdish bureaucrat who is excited about his job and sports a ridiculously milquetoast mustache…and he dresses like a first class dweeb. Also, he is clueless in regard to human rights — uh, I mean alien rights. He practically giggles when he sets a shack— filled with alien embryos — on fire. And yet he dutifully tries to get the aliens to sign a form that allows the authorities to deport them to the new camp.

Wikus is also a klutz. He accidentally sprays himself with an unknown substance and soon the hunter-geek becomes…the hunted.

You may think that this is some serious social commentary with a left-wing morality lesson; I suppose it might be but there is plenty of blood, guts, projectile vomit, and combustible bodies to keep the audience’s desire for horror film grossness satiated. This is a hard-core kind of SF movie but it is not for the brainless.

And as for pacing: this film will cause attention deficit folks to cross their eyes and swallow the fillings in their teeth. Talk about suspenseful: I was tense during the entire film. My film-going partner got a stiff neck just watching it and called out for a chiropractor in the lobby.

This film is also mega-weird — but in a good way. There is a lot going on. There are the CGI effects, there are the documentary shaky camera techniques, the black-and-white security camera business and bad-guy Nigerians who sell stuff to the aliens that provides wicked comic relief and then there is a baby alien and his father — named Christopher Johnson (no, I am not kidding) — who make us realize that even cockroach-looking aliens can have human characteristics.

I think I just wrote the longest sentence in my journalistic career.

Anyway, I liked this scary and freaky movie but I can not emphasize enough `that this is an odd horror/SF flick with a hard-shell exterior. I recommend it for the seasoned fan with a steel stomach and a taste for ambivalent endings.

The main actor, Sharlto Copley (a filmmaker, not an actor), is stunningly compelling in this role; a goofball but charismatic at the same time. I can’t get his performance out of my head. It is haunting as it is, well, fantastic.

I suspect that there are a bunch of allusions to other films; maybe some unintentionally. The end, for example, made me think about a scene in the original Frankenstein, which I got to wonder if it was accidental or not.

And that is what makes a good film good. It makes you think in all different directions. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking, but I was thinking…and shuddering. I wonder what creative nightmares I am going to get tonight?

“District 9” earns four bow ties out of five.