District 9 is not your average take on a sci-fi film. Instead of focusing on the aliens in the movie the main character is actually a human who quickly becomes one of the most wanted men in South Africa. Let me take a step back. The film starts out with a man named Wikus van de Merwe going into the slums of Johannesburg where an alien mother ship hovers overhead. The area referred to as District 9, below the ship, is inhabited by the aliens who made an emergency landing there over twenty years ago. The aliens are disliked by humans and derogatorily deemed ‘prawns’ because of their appearance.

Wikus’ works for a private military company, which has been tasked with the job of relocating the prawns to a more interment camp like area out side of the city. During his trip in District 9 he releases an unknown substance onto himself and is infected with an alien virus of sorts and subsequently begins to transform into one of the aliens. The transformation is grotesque and involves his fingernails and teeth falling out, while his left hand turns into a claw. He is taken into custody by the company he works for because only aliens(and now Wikus) can operate the highly advanced alien weaponry. While in holding he is tortured and forced to shoot many of the weapons at live targets. He eventually escapes, seeking shelter in the trash ridden slums of District 9. I won’t ruin the rest of the movie, but he ends up finding one of the extraterrestrials named Christopher who promises Wikus a cure and the possibility of being human again. In turn Wikus must help him to reach the mother ship and leave for their home planet.

Now onto some science. The alien technology showcased in the movie is impressive, but there are certainly aspects that are not believable. While the mechanized suits or the many weapons used are much more reasonable, the virus which completely mutates Wikus or the tractor beam used are less realistic. Obviously the alien ship is also something far beyond our current powers of engineering and science, but maybe in the future will too will be able to construct massive space faring vessels.

Even though the film could be simply viewed as an action movie with an alien twist it absolutely has clear themes commenting on the human condition. The awful conditions in which the aliens are living are taken directly from the actual slums in South Africa. According to Richard Corliss of Time, District 9 is loosely modeled after District 6 where more than 60,000 non-white people were forced to leave in the 1966. The discrimination of the aliens can also be viewed as a reflection on the racism towards people of different races in the real world. These aspects of the film coupled with an action packed story line made it particularly interesting to me.