District 9

What if aliens came to Earth not as conquerors or saviors, but as refugees? Neill Blomkamp's District 9 poses that question with gritty realism. The film, released in 2009, imagines a race of insect-like extraterrestrials stranded in Johannesburg, confined to a slum called District 9. Sharlto Copley stars as Wikus van de Merwe, a bureaucrat tasked with evicting the aliens. Things go horribly wrong when Wikus is exposed to a mysterious fluid that begins rewriting his DNA. Blomkamp, making his feature debut, drew from his own short film Alive in Joburg and brought a documentary style to the sci-fi genre. Produced by Peter Jackson on a modest $30 million budget, the film grossed over $210 million worldwide. It earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Shot in real Johannesburg slums with handheld cameras, the film blends mockumentary interviews, news footage, and surveillance angles. The alien language was crafted by linguist Paul Frommer, who later created Na'vi for Avatar. Copley had no prior acting experience, he was a producer and Blomkamp's friend, and improvised much of his performance. The Prawn aliens were designed to look unappealing, challenging audiences to empathize with them. The title references District Six, a Cape Town neighborhood declared whites-only during apartheid, forcing 60,000 non-white residents to relocate.[edit]

A massive alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg in 1982, stalling in the sky. After months, authorities breach it to find a million malnourished, insectoid extraterrestrials, derogatorily called Prawns. A temporary refugee camp, District 9, is established, but over 28 years it decays into a violent slum. Private military corporation Multi-National United (MNU) takes over alien management, eager to reverse-engineer alien weaponry that only works with alien DNA.

Wikus van de Merwe, a naive Afrikaner bureaucrat, is promoted to lead Operation Clean-Up, a forced relocation of Prawns to a new camp, District 10. He goes door-to-door serving eviction notices and confiscating alien tech. During a raid, he discovers Christopher Johnson, a smart Prawn, and his son. Christopher has been collecting fluid from the ship's propulsion system to fuel an escape pod. Wikus accidentally sprays himself with the black fluid, and soon his fingernails fall off, he vomits black goo, and his arm transforms into an alien appendage.

MNU doctors find Wikus's DNA merging with alien DNA, allowing him to operate alien weapons. They plan to dissect him alive. Wikus escapes, now hunted by MNU and Nigerian gangsters who want his arm. His transformation accelerates. He returns to District 9 and allies with Christopher, learning the fluid is essential to activate the mothership. Wikus's moral evolution from complicit bureaucrat to fugitive ally unfolds as MNU deploys heavily armed mercenaries. The race is on to reach the alien tech that could save both species.[edit]