District 9, director Neill Blomkamp's dystopian action flick about aliens in South Africa, opens today to a good bit of acclaim. Shot mostly in documentary-style, the film follows Wikus van der Merwe -- a hapless office drone for a private military company who possesses all the self-awareness of Michael Scott -- as he is tasked with moving extraterrestrial refugees from the eponymous shantytown to the rigidly controlled and quarantined District 10. After mishandling an alien device, Wikus contracts a virus that alters his genetic makeup and slowly transforms him into what is derogatorily referred to as a "prawn." Very quickly, he learns how the other half lives. The film is inspired by the eviction of Cape Town's District 6 and is heavy on the social commentary about the Apartheid era, the final years of which Blomkamp witnessed as a child in Johannesburg. But even more than that, the film serves as a broader highlight reel of the atrocities of our rotten century. Xenophobia is status quo, with segregation being accepted in turn. The miscegenation taboo is revived. (We're encouraged to humanize the aliens early on and do the reverse to the homo sapiens, but the audience still audibly groaned in revulsion at the mention of extraterrestrial, interspecies copulation at the showing I attended -- so much for that frontier.) There are echoes of the Holocaust, as we see medical experiments performed upon the aliens and hear Wikus somewhat glibly admit that District 10 is really more of a concentration camp than anything else. Nigerian scammers even make an appearance, demonstrating how one powerless group of people can very easily exploit another. Probably most resonant were the allusions to the war on terrorism, which were seamlessly blended in. MNU, the military company that Wikus works for, seems to be modeled after Blackwater Xe, what with its predilection for secrecy and its employment of testosterone-crazed mercenaries addicted to blind hate and violent bad-assery. As the struggle escalates between MNU and Wikus' small posse of extraterrestrial renegades, collateral damage is spun as terrorist attacks committed by prawn extremists. Through it all, aliens are painted as the insurgent other, whose rights get little more than lip service and some ineffective attention from seemingly impotent watchdog groups. By playing up the aliens' difference, the humans are not only able to commit acts of cruelty against them: They're able to justify it. Funny -- this doesn't seem terribly unlike the way some have rationalized torture by exoticizing Muslims, as Adam has documented before. It's an impressive feat that District 9 effortlessly managed to weave in so many clear references to some of the most shameful moments in modern history: You're reminded of legal regimes that permitted the gross acts committed during the Apartheid, the pre-Civil Rights era, the Holocaust, etc., but the film never feels choppy. More than anything, District 9 succeeds by demonstrating that institutionalized aggression based on fear and intolerance is a pretty universal concept with pretty universal traits. It's a major bonus that the movie works as an adrenaline-charged popcorn flick, too. The whole thing never feels too didactic thanks to a healthy dose of camp. Watch short film and District 9 precursor Alive in Joburg below. Wired also has a Q&A with Blomkamp that's worth checking out. --Alexandra Gutierrez
