District 9 (2009).

* * * * * spoilers ahoy * * * * *

I'm not sure what I expected from this movie. Aliens, action, special effects and not much food for thought. What I expected is not what I got -- but I really can't bring myself to mind.

First off, I'm not the kind of person that likes gore in a movie unless that's how the movie is advertised and it's either why I go see a movie (I bet I'm not the only one who went to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre even after being warned of imminent grossness) or I believe that it will not ruin the experience (or at least.. you know, not entirely).
District 9 had some shots I wasn't expecting and which had me averting my eyes and apologising to my aunt for asking to see this movie. Like the scene with Sharlto Copley's character beginning to lose his fingernails; and then later on, his teeth also started falling out -- nails and teeth are my two major freakouts, is it really too much to ask for a movie that gets a horrible point across without getting my stomach on a rollercoaster?

Secondly, I absolutely loved the aliens -- both as design and as characters. Moving on from the lean and graceful design (love at first sight!!), I was impressed by how well and how easily they had adapted to living on Earth. I suspect they had obviously been forced into setting up camp in D9, but they lived in their own community. Other than the scavenging issue and making/sometimes using weapons irationally, I doubt they were prone to much sudden, fatal violence (I have the feeling I just contradicted myself, but my point remains valid to me).
In fact I don't think I'm alone in liking Christopher the most -- he may very well be the most humane character in the whole movie.

Which brings me to my third point - I'm one of those last, rare moviewatchers that like watching movies for the sake of watching movies but still want to escape reality, rather than be confronted with it. I know what's going on in the world, really, so it's not like I'm sheltered and movies like District 9 shock me - I just prefer not to have to deal with these sorts of things when trying to escape them. Therefore, I had a small problem when dealing through the xenophobia and unwarranted violence towards the (mostly) non-hostile aliens. The part where Wikus 'aborts' the alien eggs and speaks about the 'popping noise' so nonchalantly really got on my nerves, and I kinda hoped that Wikus would just die.

What I think about the character of Wikus van de Merwe is that he is the naive, sheltered person I'm not. He really believes (up to a certain point) that what he does is done for a good cause, and that the aliens are really not worth being called anything other than 'prawns', which is how he calls them for a good part of the movie. Then, you know, things aren't all that rosy anymore, he gets sick, his arm is all tentacle-y, he's treated as a test subject (I got teary when he was forced to kill the alien when they were holding him in the lab, mostly because of the force of his own emotions); and then he's on the run from the people he used to trust and shacking up with Christopher and his son, rather than with a prawn and its spawn (I hear the term 'prawnling' in the fan community). This becomes his world, and his former concerns are now of absolutely no importance, when faced with actual racial (or species-based?) segregation and forced to learn how to survive as someone who is no longer human. Thanks to brilliant acting, Wikus remains human because of his experiences and what he learns out of them and most of all, thanks to his desire to remain human when humanity not only fails him, but turns against him.
This, kiddies, is what we call character evolution. So many movies miss out on this stuff, and directors and writers repeatedly fail to see how important it is to their audiences. Or, well, the part of their audiences that still want to see good movies.

Finally, I became thoroughly disgusted with and ashamed of the human race. This should be no news - anybody who's ever felt a pang of something not-so-nice towards another human being because of a social faux pas (calling someone by a derogatory term based on their appearance or other characteristics is just one example) knows exactly what I'm talking about.
All in all, District 9: I went in for the aliens and action. I got the aliens, the action was slow in coming (the first 30 or so minutes were tiring and boring (except for when aliens were on screen)) but was there eventually, and there was the unexpected bonus of food for thought, which I don't really get a lot of out of recent movies.

Plot --- from boring to 'oh God I love this movie' in approx. 1 1/2 hrs. --- 7.5/10
Visuals --- disturbing imagery, aliens, special effects --- 9/10
Sound --- the soundtrack is as dark and as gritty as the movie --- 10/10
Acting --- Sharlto Copley is fantastic as a human playing a human who becomes an alien (new talent, Hollywood!) --- 10/10