28 years ago, aliens made first contact with Earth. Humans waited for the hostile attack, or the giant advances in technology. Neither came. Instead, the aliens were refugees, the last survivors of their home world. The creatures were set up in a makeshift home in South Africa's "District 9" as the world's nations argued over what to do with them. Now, patience over the alien situation has run out. Control over the aliens has been contracted out to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company uninterested in the aliens' welfare – they will receive tremendous profits if they can make the aliens' awesome weaponry work. So far, they have failed; activation of the weaponry requires alien DNA. The tension between the aliens and the humans comes to a head when an MNU field operative, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), contracts a mysterious virus that begins changing his DNA. Wikus quickly becomes the most hunted man in the world, as well as the most valuable – he is the key to unlocking the secrets of alien technology. Ostracized and friendless, there is only one place left for him to hide: District 9.This is a very tough movie to review without knowing the specific person that you are recommending it to. I loved it. I think its one of the better movies to come out this year. I have always been a big fan of sci-fi and this movie is a great sci-fi movie. It takes you to an alternate world and does a good job that you can believe it really exists. The story and how it is developed is very well scripted. It has well written political themes. Besides all that, I just kept telling myself that this was a 30 million budgeted sci-fi movie and I loved it. However, it is completely not a mainstream movie. I could see 75% of the people that see this based on the marketing campaign hating this movie. It reminded me a lot of Blair Witch Project. I saw an advance viewing of that movie a month before it came out and thought it was phenomenal, especially based on how simple it was. Then the marketing came out hyping it as the "scariest movie of all time" and people went in to the movie with such massive expectations that most ended up disappointed. This movie is awesome for what it is, but if you are expecting a major blockbuster type movie - you will be completely disappointed.
I can't blindly recommend this movie to anyone. I can say that I absolutely loved the movie. It was a well written sci-fi movie that suceeded in taking you to a alternate version of our world.
