District 9 Review
Submitted via theSprout
I'd made a conscious effort not to read too much about District 9 (1hr 51min, Rated 15) prior to viewing.
After wandering into a midnight showing of another of Peter Jackson's vehicles, The Frighteners, in Marmaris some years ago, and not knowing anything about the plot but being subsequently blown away by the insanity that followed, I knew his involvement in District 9 would make it one of his more feverish films (also - if you're over 18 - see 1992's Braindead).
What starts as a scratchy, docu-style tale of aliens loosely veiled as victims of apartheid gathers in momentum and plot into an awesome sci-fi splatterfest.
Chirpy government lackey Wikus Van De Merwe has been promoted to head up a campaign of rehoming nearly two million aliens (or 'prawns' as they're referred to at varying levels of disgust) who have become stranded in Johannesburg in the shadow of their mothership, which hangs overhead in nearly every shot.
Living in a shanty town, the bullish aliens prove more than a handful for the military operation sent in to evict them, and when Wikus is exposed to a strange liquid and suffers horrific side-effects, we realise there are far more sinister forces at work than anything the prawns can muster up.
The handheld camera captures every turning point with shaky realism, and with each shift up a gear comes even more eye-popping effects and gruesome exits.
Robocop, Starship Troopers, Predator and countless other classics could be drawn upon for comparison, but you've never seen anything like this before.
Go in as blindly as possible, and soak up the carnage.