Before I start this review, I want readers to forgive me for a post I made about this movie a month back. Obviously I wrote that post before the movie was out so there are quite a lot of errors regarding the story. I won't delete it though because there's also a trailer for the movie, so feel free to check it out.
Okay, back to business. From what I've read from the forums on the web, this movie had received mixed comments from viewers. Some love it, others hate it. But the critics sure are loving this flick as most of them gave the movie positive reviews. My review below contains a little bit of spoilers so please skip if you haven't watch the movie.
As you can see from the trailer, the film is shown in documentary-style format. There are several people interviewed regarding the arrival of the aliens and their impacts to surrounding society. The commentators not only giving the backstory for the main plot but also telling us the story as the film moves along. For me, this is quite a fresh approach in narrating a story for a movie, making it a little bit different compared to the handheld cam format such as in Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, or the documentary-style format that's only limited for certain scenes such as the plane crash scene in the movie Knowing.
A little back story for the movie. 20 years prior to the events in the movie, an alien spaceship arrived on Earth. Well, not execatly 'on' but 'floating' on the sky of Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans went on the ship to investigate as it just hovered in the sky with no sign to make contact. On the ship, they found a large group of malnutrished non-humans and helped them settled on Earth. Eventually, the government camps they were set in (called District 9) were turned into slums and a private military-based company called Multinational United (MNU) was contracted to watch a close eye on the non-humans.
The movie follows the journey of Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) as he was selected by his company (MNU) to head on an operation to move the non-humans, nearly 2 million of them, to a new camp called District 10. As he goes around the slum collecting signatures from the non-humans and asking them to evict their house, he come upon a device containing some kind of black liquid that accidentally sprayed on his face. From that moment on, he slowly falls ill and starts to take form of the non-humans. As he now has the hybrid DNA of the human and non-human, he is highly pursue by MNU as he is the key in unlocking the secret of the non-human weapons technology. Only non-humans are able to use the weapons (that had been confiscated by MNU of course) as they somehow can only be operated by those with non-humans DNA.
Refuse to be a lab rat, Wikus escape from MNU and seek refuge in District 9. He then makes a deal with one of the non-human; he will help the non-human and his little son escape to the mother ship and the non-human will help him change back to the human form. And the battle between the two-man team and MNU begins....
I really love this movie for it's approach in storytelling (as I mention before, the documentary-style) and also for the engaging story itself. I really LOVE the story a lot. It's thought-provoking and also quite touching nearing the end. I also like to mention that there are quite a lot of gory scenes involving exploded bodies (definitely not recommended for minors) which I think can be reduced. I'm also impressed with the acting, especially Sharlto Copley as Wikus. I can hardly believe the geeky Wikus that I've seen in the beginning of the movie can end up like...what he end up to be in the end. He's very good for a first-timer (he never acted in a movie before). The special effects were awesome too; the giant floating ship, the believable non-humans and the exploding bodies (yuck!).
In terms of plot, I think the writer should give more info as there are quite a few things that I don't understand about the story. Although the plotholes are quite understandable because there were quite many things that the humans in the movie do not know about the non-humans, but I would really appreciate if they could give some assumptions by the commentators on certain things.
Overall, it's a really good movie with an engaging story, it's fantastic! You can click here to learn more about the movie on Wikipedia.
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