The movie opens as a sort of quasi-documentary following a bureaucrat as he tries to evict 1.8 million insect-like aliens stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa for the last 20 years, and move them to a different, worse slum further away from the city population who are now tired of the alien refugees. This first section of the movie serves as a dark satire on man's inhumanity to man (that's right, I'm taking it back to grade school). We get many of those awkward chuckle moments where we see something genuinely funny, and then realize if this were real (and it definitely could be real) and we were treating other people this way, it would be sickening. Without warning, the movie takes a hard right turn into more serious science fiction involving transformations and amazing alien weaponry and space ships and battlemechs and the whole way through I am thrilled and sickened and loving every minute of it. Note that the movie is extremely violent and graphically gory, all heightened by the documentary film style. To anyone interested in seeing District 9 or even those who have already seen it, I would highly recommend reading this interview with directory Neill Blomkamp. It outlines Blomkamp's backstory for the aliens and how the ended up at Earth. Though it says there are spoilers, I don't think there was anything there that hurt my experience. It actually gave me a better feel for what was going on and put everything into better context.
Re: District 9
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