(4 out of 5 stars)

An unknown cast with an unknown director has created a thought provoking take on the alien genre. Although Peter Jackson is a producer to add credibility to the movie going public, this is 100% an independent movie that has become the must see movie of the summer.

The story revolves around a character named Wikus Van de Merwe, a government worker of the agency MNU (Multi National United), who has been assigned to move the aliens from District 9 to the new District 10. The aliens, referred to in kind of a racial slur as Prawns, arrived 20 years ago above Johannesburg, South Africa, and were saved by the humans only to be segregated into a slum to be treated poorly and secretly have experiments done on them to find out more about them and their technology. Wikus starts out as a typical human being heartless to these aliens who in all reality just want to go home and ultimately becomes compassionate to one of the aliens who has worked the past twenty years on a fluid that will boost his ship back to the mothership and could provide a cure to Wikus who was infected by alien DNA slowly turning into one of them.

What is compelling about this movie is how it is the opposite of every other alien movie and provides a social commentary on humans and their racism tendencies. The way we treat the aliens is much like how African Americans were treated in the 50s and 60s. A typical alien movie shows the aliens doing tests on humans, and in this story, the tables have been turned. We do not seek to get them back to their homeland; we instead trap them in a slum for 20 years only to force them to move to an even worse slum further away from humanity.

The documentary style is what makes this movie work. The story is rich, but does not use compelling dialogue or complex characters. This movie uses its style to keep the viewer interested switching between the documentary and the action sequences between Wikus and the alien and the MNU. Now that the aliens have been moved to District 10, it will be interesting to see if an inevitable sequel has the aliens come back for revenge or to only pick up the ones they had to leave behind. This will be a sequel worthy of continuing a great story. 

Suggested Similar Recommendations: Men In Black and The Day the Earth Stood Still