An unusual film, District 9, opens this Friday. Sony’s alien-themed movie is full of blood and gore, with the usual horror elements. Depicted in a grainy, pseudo-documentary style, the first third of the picture is satirical, with interview snippets that backtrack on an alien visitation that hovers a mothership over Johannesburg, South Africa, depositing a bunch of sick, unwanted extra-terrestrials in the slums.
The plot concerns Wikus, an almost idiotic but decent bureaucrat who is assigned to infiltrate the encampment of the title, evict the aliens, and appease the city’s racially mixed population—all of whom appear to be united in wanting the aliens booted out. Something goes wrong, of course, and near-imbecile Wikus becomes transformed by the experience. Literally.
So does District 9, which until then feels like an odd, cynical short. Disparate plot points—an ominously powerful United Nations type authority, Nigerian thugs, and a government-controlled health care system with the ethics to match—combine for what’s practically an old-fashioned buddy action thriller. Enter a whiz kid, add dark humor, genetics and weapons, with a father-son bond, and you get Alien Nation meets Enemy Mine meets The Fly.
Once the action picks up (“Go! Drive!”) and world government stooge Wikus and an alien named Chris calculate mutual self-interest and take on the automatons, things get interesting. By the time a bug-eyed alien sputters in subtitles to “go down and initiate the binary commands,” you know it isn’t the typical sci-fi horror pic. District 9, which is not for the faint-hearted, feels unfinished, and it doesn’t exactly take off (not with Wikus at the core), but this strange planet earth offers food for thought about who’s human, who’s not, and the forces that alienate us.
