The Thousands

Provocative, gory and thoroughly enjoyable, District 9 is a low-budget alien flick that has a big-budget feel yet eschews both Independence Day jingoism and ET sentimentality. And its gritty verité quality is far more unsettling than your average Michael Bay blamfest.

Johannesburg is a powerful backdrop for what’s essentially a racism allegory. For 28 years, aliens (pejoratively named “prawns”) stranded in their broken-down mothership have been sequestered in the titular slum, becoming a political football. Locals want them shifted away, and both Nigerian gangsters and the private military contractor Multi-National United have been trying to exploit their advanced biotechnological weaponry.**Chosen to evict the aliens from District 9 is an MNU desk-jockey, the Murray-from-Flight-Of-The-Conchords-esque Wikus van der Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley). After being sprayed with mysterious alien chemicals, Wikus is revolted to discover their DNA is melding with his. But MNU literally wants a piece of him because he can now fire alien weapons, and District 9 is now his only place of refuge. The film’s highlight is watching Wikus metamorphose, not from human to alien, but from pencil-pushing dickhead to action hero with a conscience.