Ani Carpenter

District 9

So I went and saw the brand spanking new ‘District 9’ the other week and I totally loved it. Apparently, every newspaper and magazine (that mum and dad had read) had given it 5/5, but I will explain my gross over-generalisation of my opinion all in due course. As all credible newspapers (mum and dad read stuff like The Times and The Guardian) had given it rave reviews, and it was produced by Peter Jackson, who as everyone knows directed the infallible (this is just my opinion as I thought the tone of the movie captured that of the books splendidly) Lord Of The Rings, I sort of expected fireworks.

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I had seen the trailers for ‘District 9’ and I already knew that this was a different sort of film to LOTR so, naturally, I was curious as to see whether Jackson was a one-trick pony. He isn’t. The film is pretty impressive, with some awesome special effects. Basically, the plot is; a mass of aliens come to earth in this spaceship. They’re all ill from malnutrition so the human species decides that they have a responsibility to house them. So the aliens get put into these really grotty slums where crime breeds until they, eventually, get evicted. This is where it get really cool because the guy leading the operation, a cruel, government, desk-job type guy gets infected with this alien ‘fluid’, which they need in order to get the hell outta earth and back home. This guy starts to change into one of the aliens and the government capture him and start testing on him in order to use alien weaponry (as it is so advanced that only aliens can use it). It’s then a race to get the fluid back and up to the spaceship before the guy changes permanently. There’s more going on but I wouldn’t want to spoil it, now!

There are obvious underlying politics to this film, such as the aliens could be compared to racial or religious minorities that government majorities don’t understand so treat like dirt (read The Guardian review for more on the politics ). I wasn’t sure throughout the film whether I liked it or not, as there are some really emotional moments that made me cry (I’m a girl though, so…) and sometimes you just don’t wanna see anymore, you know. But, I figured, in the end, if a film can portray that sort of stuff to an extent so real that you actually shed tears in the middle of the cinema and consider running out, it must be pretty damn remarkable. Back to special effects, there’s this one scene where the spaceship over the city looks real, I swear, you almost can’t tell it’s CGI (the only way you can is that you know it is so you’re specifically looking, but it’s hard to find!) and the design behind the alien’s mental control system in their robots and stuff is really inventive. There aren’t any knobs or levers, they control the ship and their robots with their mind, (but not in a psychic way) and this is quite new as alien films before this, such as ‘Alien’ and ‘ET’ never thought of technology as advanced as this, it was all pretty relatable. So, despite my originally mixed emotions and agitation over the politics behind the film, I would definitely recommend it. Without emotions getting in the way, this is most certainly a spectacle and another score from Jackson, as a producer.

Written by Ani Carpenter

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