When Humanity Is the Real Monstrosity...

The idea of using science fiction and horror stories as a way of discussing taboo or controversial social, political, and religious themes is nothing new. Since the birth of the horror genre, which came into being after the popularity of 18th century gothic romance took off, and since science fiction was first acknowledged as a genre unto itself in the late 19th century, the two have often dealt with issues that were considered to be of the utmost social importance while disguising their message in a fictional reality. In the new sci-fi / horror film District 9, director Neill Blomkamp takes the themes and ideas behind his 2005 short film Alive in Joburg and attempts to translate them into a full-length feature film. Blomkamp, who makes his feature debut with District 9, has had experience in both film and television, though mainly in the capacity of a special effects consultant and animator. Blomkamp was born in South Africa in 1979 and clearly his experiences there and his observation of racism have informed his worldview. In District 9, which was inspired by the historical events of District 6 in Cape Town, Africa, he examines government-enforced and organized racism and apartheid through the use of science fiction facades. Using the events at District 6 as a basis for the film, Blomkamp sets his film in Johannesburg in the present and creates a military-run site called District 9 as the film’s main setting. There an organization has created a slum for aliens who landed in Johannesburg twenty-something years earlier. The film takes elements of history and combines them with typical alien and monster movie scenarios in order to explain how people of a different race, or in this case species, are treated as less-than-human and subjugated by racist laws. The film also draws on the idea of transformation, both in terms of a physical change as well as a change of perspective, in order to create an emotional backbone for the story.

 

 

 

In 1982, an alien ship settled itself in the shies above Johannesburg, South Africa. There it lay dormant, at least in appearances from the outside, for three months until government agents cut into the ship and there to their shock find thousands of alien life forms starving nearly to death. MNU, a military contractor whose main interest is the aliens’ advanced weapons technology, decides to create an area called District 9 for the aliens to move to where they will be given the opportunity to live alongside humans and form their own society. But this doesn’t go well. District 9 is overpopulated, impoverished, and not more than an elaborate slum. There the aliens scavenge for food and for possessions and frequently come into volatile contact with their human neighbors, many of whom seek to exploit the aliens. The aliens themselves are no angels as they create an underground trade system in District 9. The aliens, who seem to have a heightened sense of taste, take to buying cat food, which produce for them a narcotic high. They also sell their weapons, which unbeknownst to the buyers can only be operated by the aliens, on the black market in exchange for cat food or as a trade-off to the local pimps who supply them with human prostitutes.

 

Over twenty-five years later, the slums have become a filthy environment that hosts all varieties of illegal activity. After protests from anti-alien groups who demand that the aliens be removed, MNU comes to the decision to relocate the aliens. The aliens, who are given the derogatory name prawns because of their resemblance to a cricket species found in South Africa, which is nicknamed the Parktown Prawn, have become both victims and aggressors in District 9 and their presence has become a catalyst for civil unrest. While groups of protestors declare that the aliens are victims of inter-species prejudice, MNU prepares to relocate the aliens, now nearing 2 million, to District 10 just outside of Johannesburg. Heading up this operation is field operative Wikus van de

Merwe, a conservative and unassuming sycophant at MNU, who is married to the boss’ daughter. Wikus, who at first appears to be mild-manner, reveals a strong and violent prejudice against the “prawns” as he serves them notice of their eviction. He even participates in vile “abortions” in which alien eggs are incinerated and while the alien babies inside scream and their eggs burst open, he jokingly says that the sound reminds him of popping corn. But Wikas perception of the aliens is about to change dramatically.

During a raid of what he believes to be a weapons manufactory, Wikas accidentally sprays himself in the face with a black liquid from a small silver canister. Over the next 72 hours Wikus will go through the ultimate transformation, both physically and mentally.

 

Soon Wikus begins to feel ill and he starts spewing up a thick black liquid. Earlier during the raid he had broken his arm and it had to be placed in a cast and sling. Later when Wikus goes to the doctor’s office to have it looked at, he is horrified to see that his left hand and lower arm have mutated into that of an alien. He is becoming one of them. A “prawn”. A freak. When the heads of MNU discover that Wikus is metamorphosing into an alien, they immediately realize that a great opportunity has beset them. The aliens’ advanced weaponry was designed so that only the aliens DNA could activate them and make them usable. MNU had been trying to find a way to duplicate the alien technology or at least bypass the DNA coding on the weapons, but had been unsuccessful. Now before them they had a man with both human and alien DNA and by manipulating his genetics they might be able to make the weapons functional in the hands of human soldiers. The financial prospects of new technologically superior alien technology being without limits, MNU decides that Wikus would be better off dead and his DNA will be a great asset in their experiments. When Wikus is restrained and put on an operation table so that they can harvest his organs, he manages to break free and barely escapes MNU’s security.

 

Wikus hides in the one place that he feels he will be safe from MNU: the slums of District 9. There he takes shelter in the hut where he first conducted the raid and where he was exposed to the canister’s liquid. Now a fugitive and being hunted down by his wife’s father, Wikus is a man of desperation. He knows that he’ll be forever changed into an alien unless he can find a cure for himself. Wikus, being hunted by MNU soldiers and on the verge of collapse, hides in one of the alien’s huts. Earlier he had attempted to evict the Christopher Johnson, the alien whose hut he now sought refuge in, and had even threatened Christopher’s son. But when Christopher sees that Wikus has been exposed to the liquid in the canister and is becoming like them, he lets Wikus stay. Wikus learns that the canister had been in Christopher’s possession before he had confiscated it and that it was necessary in order for the aliens to access their ship and leave. He also learns that the only hope for him to become fully human again is for him to go to the ship and undergo a procedure that can’t be performed elsewhere. Wikus and Christopher agree, though with some reservations about each other, that they must unite and try to find a way of retrieving the canister from MNU’s headquarters. But can they succeed in returning the aliens to their planet and curing Wikus before his transformation becomes permanent? Not only will Wikus and Christopher have to confront the sadistic prejudices of the MNU soldiers, but they will also have to stay one step ahead of a Nigerian street gang that practice black magic and believe that Wikus is the key in their being able to become aliens too.

 

 

The film’s cast features mostly unknown actors, all of which give strong performances despite the two-dimensional characters. The cast is headed by Sharlto Copley as Wikus van de Merwe. In his role, Sharlto does well in making the character an infuriating bigot and cipher, but as his character evolves, literally and figuratively, he becomes a kind of everyman who audiences will forgive and possibly cheer for.

 

The story, which takes a lot of ideas from other sci-fi films, is nothing original and lacks the invention that one would hope for in a director’s first film. Though District 9 is deeply flawed, it does feature amazing visual imagery and earns my respect simply for being so bold. I only wish that the ideas had been better executed and that Blomkamp had taken more time filling out the gaps in the screenplay.

Before wading knee-deep into a lengthy analysis, first let me say that after all of the buzz surrounding this film and all of the praise that I’ve either read or heard, I was hoping for something more profound in District 9. I should also say that other than a few reviews I’d read prior to seeing the film, I knew virtually nothing about its premise. So I came to the cinema with no real expectations of what I was going to be seeing; only a hope that I would enjoy it. And ultimately I did, to a degree, but I was also very disappointed that there wasn’t more to the story. The problems with the screenplay begin to manifest themselves early on. Why did the aliens come to Earth? Why were they starving themselves inside of the ship when they could have easily gotten food from the animals in the rain forests of Africa? How did the alien weapons get circulated into society when the government had first access to the aliens’ ship? If the aliens like cat food so much, why don’t they just buy it in the bulk instead of trading their weapons for it?

None of these questions were given legitimate answers and this made for a frustrating viewing as I continued to spot oversights and plot holes in the story’s logic that were never addressed by the film makers.

 

I was also slightly annoyed by how similar the film was to other science fiction and horror films that have come out in the past twenty or so years.

The film opens and closes with a series of scripted interviews and documentary-style footage that was very reminiscent of both The Blair Witch Project and the more recent Cloverfield. The film also feels derivative of David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, in which a man undergoes a tragic and grotesque transformation into a human-sized insect. I was reminded of another film as well. The idea of a man with certain prejudices being caught up in a conflict between aliens and humans was used in the Wolfgang Petersen film Enemy Mine. In that film a human soldier and an alien soldier must join forces in order to survive and in doing so they learn to overcome their personal prejudices and hatred of one another. All in all, District 9 is something of an oddity, being a combination of all of these films.

 

Another issue that I took up with the film is a bit more philosophical. Since the story is meant to act as a parable for the apartheid in Africa and is meant to be a testament to the destructive powers of racism, I felt that portraying the aliens as grotesque and frankly, unpleasant for the first half of the picture was counter-intuitive to the film’s moral message. Now, I realize that to a certain degree this was a way of introducing audiences to the aliens from the common perception that they were stupid, disgusting, insect-like creatures with no admirable qualities whatsoever and that the film makers would then spend the rest of the film attempting to subvert that notion of the aliens being inferior. But what bothered me the most is that in their efforts to create a species of aliens that was as flawed as human beings are, they failed to demonstrate their positive characteristics. If the aliens are meant to be sympathetic, then why do they have weapons that are so destructive? It would be a mistake to present either the humans or the aliens as being an idealized people or culture, so naturally the director has chosen to show the shortcomings of both species, but in his endeavor to portray both sides as complex and equally imperfect he’s made both species rather unlikable. Maybe they should just kill each other off and leave the Earth to the cats and their tasty cat food.

As for the film’s strengths, they lie predominantly in the realm of special effects and visual storytelling. There is a philosophical depth and an emotional core to this film, but they are both undermined by the director’s use of gratuitous and gory violence. In the end, District 9 is admirable for its message even if that message comes off as being muddled and contradictory. It is also admirable for its visual scope and for its willingness to be a big budget alien-versus-humanity story, which will likely never reach the mainstream appeal of more conventional and upbeat sci-fi films. Whatever the future holds for Neill Blomkamp’s career, I hope that his next film will be absent of abundant special effects and will focus more on characters and plot development. Undoubtedly, District 9 will become a cult classic and with good reason, but I also have predictions that it will spawn a series of inferior sequels and will capitalize on its own success until the novelty has worn off. Here’s to doomsday scenarios preserving artistic integrity!