‘District 9′

Having only heard about this a couple of hours ago, i’m very much writing in an addrenaline-fuelled frenzy about this…

But wtf?!

Where did this come from? ‘District 9′ – a smart, polemical science-fiction film based in South Africa – has been styled as a documentary-style allegory on the reactions of a community to foreign visitors in need of refuge. That these visitors are aliens looks to be beside the point; the film’s  Johannesburg setting a coming to terms with the country’s apartheid period – and the racial inequality that still exists. To explain (and to answer my original queston…), here’s the short film that’s been extended for the summer ’09 release:

For me, the return of sci-fi as an inventive, thrilling and thoughtful genre is a reason to cheer alone. Much has been said about the Kubrick/Tarkovsky-esque ‘Moon’ released earlier this year (or perhaps more about the fact that it was directed by David Bowie’s son), but the general consensus was that the film had overshot it’s ideas to plot ratio, and many viewers were left confused or bored. Same as it ever was for arthouse sci-fi, really. But ‘District 9′ looks a little different – slightly reminiscent of ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘United 93′ in it’s use of documentary-style coverage (although this apparently get’s phased-out as the film progresses), the film aims for realism and thrills as well as social commentary and ideas.

And it looks very well realised. Apparently shot on a £30 million budget (peanuts for a film like this, obviously), the mix of lo-fi settings and production design, gritty alien-attire, relatively sparse visual effects and an unknown cast make the budget work for the film. The way it deals with the supernatural in a successful costume/effects trade-off make it similar to ‘Pans Labyrinth’, I’d say. Anyway, for the indie purist the fact that you could make around seven ‘District 9′s for one ‘Transformers’ make the film’s conception all the more satisfying. It doesn’t look like it aims to save on big shoot-em-up sequences either.

This comes at a great time for the film industry, when over-long and over-budgeted B-movie blockbusters are still heading the cinema listings, and after the relatively successful (on every level) ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Watchmen’, the comic-book franchise looks to be running out of ideas. Thank God. Althought it looks as if the UK has been forgotten about in the release schedule, ‘District 9′ is doing big things on it’s US release this week and has had some incredible reviews.

We wait in anticipation.