District 9

District 9 Didn’t know much about this one, other than having seen the trailer a few dozen times. It looked good, had a feel about, and I wasn’t disappointed. There are no big-name actors in this—in fact the principle has never acted before in his life. I’ve never heard of the director. Apparently he made his name doing special effects.

Here’s the back story, which is told as scenes from several documentaries. 20 years ago, a huge starship arrives in our atmosphere and settled over Johannesburg, South Africa. It doesn’t move or make a sound for months as humanity watches. Finally, someone decides to cut their way into the ship (Which is as big as a city) and they find a million starving aliens who look vaguely insectoid. They shuttle the dying creatures to the surface, set up a settlement, feed them and care for them. The settlement slowly devolves into a slum as reality hits—the aliens are stranded, can never leave again. Something broke.

So essentially, what we have is a new round of Apartheid with big bugs instead of indigenous Africans. A mid-level bureaucrat gets caught up in a resettlement scam and accidentally discovers the secret of why the aliens are stuck here while he is “infected” with alien DNA. As you can imagine, he begins to become an alien. This causes problems at home. Plus, when the government finds out, he becomes the most valuable commodity on the planet. The aliens have very advanced weaponry—which has mostly been confiscated—but it is linked to their DNA which means humans can’t use it. We can’t even figure out what each weapon does. But our hero—anti-hero really—can fire the weapons.

The movie is shot with that frenetic, rough, edgy documentary look that has become popular recently, even though it often doesn’t work well. In this case it does. If you’ve seen Quarantine, it’s sort of like that, although the middle part of this movie loses the POV camera and settles into more mainstream styles while managing to keep the suspense and tension highish.

It’s a good movie. Better than I’d hoped. It is inventive and clever and shot so well one forgets one is in a movie theater. It didn’t occur to me until I was walking out that ¾ of the movie is CGI. It was seamless. We would expect no less from Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) who produced this one.

This one is rated R, and rightfully so. They love to use the F word in South Africa. It is gory, but not in a gratuitous way. One of the alien weapons blows people up—literally. But the camera never lingers on the gore. Each sequence only lasts about half-a-second. Lots of blood spatter.

The script is good. It takes our main characters, the bureaucrat and an alien named Christopher Johnson, through interesting changes. The audience follows each as they slowly and painfully find common ground through dire necessity. The ending is bittersweet. No one gets what they want, or even need. And the movie slips back into documentary mode at the end, which is very effective. We get to see the worst and best of both species.

As I said, it is a good movie. Better than most these days, but not a mainstream affair. It is genre at its best . . . not mainstream at all, and will not appeal to many people. I liked it.

Sneak preview! I saw a trailer for a new Zombie movie! It’s called Zombieland, and stars Woody Harrelson. Woo-hoo!