OK but not great

Missed ‘Alien Nation’ and its arrival of an Alien slave ship on Earth the first time round? Well the good news is that this is almost a remake, that is if the Aliens landed in South Africa and were more insectoid in appearance. District 9 is partially filmed in that terrible Cloverfield/documentary style, so you learn from the start that key figures survive and life doesn’t change too much in the future – like the perfect episode of a TV series (always end the way you start). This slow start and documentary style lessens the potential tension, but does make the story a little more believable.

In this movie Aliens come to Earth and instead of making us think about our place in the universe, or changing the world for the better, nothing changes and we treat them terribly, putting them into refugee camps that quickly deteriorate and then move them on to the inhabitable suburbs.

As it’s filmed as a documentary for a major part, and no one shows any glimmer of humanity, it’s hard to feel anything for the lead character, even when circumstances forces the lead to confront his prejudices.

There is a little bit of action and a large fire-fight for those that like their science fiction hollow and full of explosions, but don’t expect too much of that either. If this film was made during apartheid, it would have been impressive, but now its just depressing. A very predictable and lacklustre movie, but it still rates higher than most, simply because so much poor quality sci-fi has been produced!

7/10