District 9

With Peter Jackson and his Wingnut production company associated with this film, I was excited to see it.

The premise was not altogether new, but still it has been long enough that an "aliens-come-to-earth-to-live" theme is fresh enough for me. We begin twenty years after a massive alien space ship appears over Johannesburg South Africa. Inside the ship was found to be thousands of bug-like aliens we call Prawn. They were a destitute, malnourished lot.

So we took them in and made a place for them on the planet, a.k.a District 9. However after twenty years D9 has become a crime ridden slum and they must be moved as the people are fed up with the cat food loving aliens.

The movie begins very documentary like. With a camera man following the story of the person in charge of evicting and moving the aliens. I was sitting there for about twenty or thirty minutes of the movie asking myself what in the world I was watching. I wondered if the whole movie was going to be like this and add to that it was very gross. I am not very squeamish (he's lying) but there was a lot of uncomfortable nasty scenes during the first thirty minutes. But after that it ceased being a documentary and kicked into full movie mode.

It turned out to be an excellent ride after that. I loved the rest of the movie from then on! You finally start to care about the characters and their plight. The special effects were great, especially the alien weaponry which becomes the focus of the story line.

If you can push past the first part of the movie, then checking out District 9 is definitely worth it!