15 • 112 mins • 4 September

Director: Neill Blomkamp

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt

Rating:

We all know Hollywood’s rules of engagement when it comes to aliens. If they’re ugly, pernicious and land-grabbing then they’re obliged to perish in a final reel FX barrage. If they’re cosmic Jiminy Crickets then they wave a schmaltzy adios and ascend to the stars, trailing looks of gooey wonderment in their wake. It’s the law.

Just as romance flicks rarely venture beyond the fizz of first dates to show the inevitable years of snits and disappointments that follow, so big screen SF traditionally dodges the issue of long-term co-habitation. District 9 dares to go there. Here’s a world in which a vast starship has clung to the skies over Johannesburg for two decades, its unearthly occupants exiled to a ghetto existence of poverty, exploitation and filth, uneasy neighbours with the human population. Now a profit-hungering multinational is preparing to deal with this tinderbox refugee problem…

It’s not an entirely revolutionary premise, of course. 1988’s Alien Nation staked out similar turf. But first-time director Neill Blomkamp brings a contemporary cinematic spin, dealing in hand-held hi-def video and assembling his tale from ersatz documentary footage, raw street vox pops, clumsy corporate video and the endless soundbite-scrolling babble of 24 hour news feeds. It’s a choppy ride, but it’s a choice that mimics the blur and immediacy of 21st Century media, endowing the movie with an impressive modern energy.

Yes, it’s a piece of South African cinema, but the apartheid parallels are thankfully underplayed. You soon realise Blomkamp is intent on spinning a full-blooded, deftly satirical yarn, not labouring a political tract. This has more in common with the punk verve of vintage 2000 AD than didactic ‘90s sister title Crisis. The MNU corporation is shown as a faceless, broad stroke signifier of capitalist greed – “the second largest weapons manufacturer in the world” – as ruthless in its exploitation of humanity as it is of alienkind.

Tantalisingly, the film also refuses to detail the culture of the visitors. We’re told that mankind dubs them prawns but we never learn the real name of their species, their planet of origin, their purpose on Earth or indeed anything much beyond their fondness for cat food and ability to drop the F-bomb in subtitle form. At one point they mutter “Our plan is ready now!” like drive-in Martians. But their jittery co-existence with man – whether officialdom or the shantytown’s ruthless criminal underworld – is clearly drawn. An iridiscent, instinctively discomforting mix of insect and crustacean, they’re effectively realised with a seamless fusion of CG and prosthetics.

The movie’s true masterstroke comes in the form of its lead character. Wikus van der Merwe is a nepotistically-appointed bureaucrat, a Pooterish Afrikaaner charged with overseeing the mass eviction of the alien township. Tank-top, Chuckle Brothers moustache, neat side-parting. The word dweeb is all but laser-etched on his forehead. From the moment you clock his nervous weasel features you know he’s one of those middle-management peons cinema routinely earmarks for death in a moment of grisly, crowdpleasing black comedy.

And then there’s a moment when you realise, with sudden, amused shock, that this is the hero, that they’ve handed the movie to this man (actually, it may be the moment that he ditches the tank-top). Sharlto Copley is brilliant as Wikus, mining unsuspected reserves of heroism and furious morality beneath the nerdish exterior as he finds himself “the most valuable business artefact on Earth”…

While the viral campaign and mockumentary style primed us for something in the vein of Cloverfield, District 9 ultimately proves to be in a much older tradition. This is pure body horror in the lineage of Alien, The Thing and The Fly. There are frequent swerves into gross-out – people choke up teeth and vomit oily black goo, suffer mutations of the flesh. It’s here, in the gleeful gore and viscera, that you truly sense the spirit of producer Peter Jackson, the young gore-hound who brought us Brain Dead.

And then, in the final reel, the movie shifts again, surrendering to the trad beats of an action flick. It’s a perfectly satisfying pay-off, riffing on the climaxes to Aliens and ET, but you may just find yourself wishing for something as unique and as inventive as the movie that led you there.

Nick Setchfield