So a lot of you are probably wondering if District 9 is as good as all of the early hype indicates, and the answer is an absolutely resounding yes.

What is most remarkable about District 9 is the way that producer Peter Jackson (Lord Of the Rings) and director Neill Blomkamp (directing his first feature here) achieved the feat of creating the big blockbuster feel of this movie — the special effects here are absolutely amazing — with a shoestring budget of about $30 million (if reports are to be believed) and a cast of largely unknown actors.

In watching movies about how we as a civilization might react to first contact with an extraterrestrial race — from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind to Contact to Independence Day — I have rarely, if ever, seen a flick that nails it right on the head the way that District 9 does.

The added bonus is the fact that while telling a great story which serves as a rather obvious metaphor for human injustices ranging from the Holocaust to Apartheid, District 9 takes you on the thrill ride of a lifetime — particularly during the latter half of the movie.

First off, let's get a few things out of the way.

District 9 is not a metaphor for Area 51, or any of the other conspiracy theories about official government contact with aliens that have found their way into modern pop culture. If anything, the internment camp for aliens at the center of this film more closely resembles the sort of ghetto slum you might find in any major U.S. city, than it does some sort of super-secret government installation.

The fact that District 9 lies in Johannesburg, South Africa — with its obvious connections to the era of apartheid — is not entirely lost either. But rather than dwell upon that connection, District 9 is a film that instead, once those comparisons are established, soon commences to kicking some serious ass.

The basic story here is that, for reasons which are never established, an alien race parked a gigantic UFO over South Africa two decades ago, and that some one million of its inhabitants (who the locals refer to somewhat disparagingly as "prawns"), have since been quarantined in an area known as District 9.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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