Wikus Van De Merwe is our main character who occupies the vast majority of the scenes. He is a good-natured straight-laced kind of person who seems to thrive in a office management position. He has been working with a government branch in charge of outreach to the alien refugees. The nation has decided to relocate them to a new camp outside of the city, and Wikus is given the task of chief administrator of this action.
Sandra Van De Merwe, a beautiful young woman who seems happily married to Wikus. Her father is the head of some unnamed gigantic influential corporation. She seems to like Wikus very much and would like to live a happy normal life.
Wikus’s Father in-law is a powerful intimidating businessman. He seems to have great political influence as well. He is responsible for getting Wikus this new important position, which gives him great power over Wikus. He seems to have a low opinion of his son-in-law and may be actively trying to sabotage him. He is very protective of his daughter but does not divulge anything to her about what he does for a living.
Christopher the Prawn is mysterious. After seeing several scenes of the aliens behaving animalistic, we finally see one who has the ability to reason and speak with subtitles. His backstory is a mystery, but he seems to be very intelligent and is working towards a solution to the refugee crisis as a whole. He is collecting pieces of alien technology to build something that is not immediately understood. He is able to put his prejudice aside and trust Wikus when the crisis begins.
Christopher the Prawn’s Son is a curious and helpful little boy. He exhibits many of the traditional cuteness signifiers despite being largely cockroach-like in form. His very existence helps the viewer identify and humanize the weird and off-putting aliens. He helps to clarify the main Prawn’s motivations and priorities.
The movie begins as a documentary style fiction about an alien invasion turned refugee crisis. As the viewer is brought up to speed quickly, we meet our main characters from a camera’s point of view as if watching a reality T.V. program. The protagonist is a clear example of the Hollywood everyman who has worked hard to earn a decent job and a good wife. He is motivated to impress everyone in his life to do a great job with this new opportunity he is offered. The job is to lead the effort to relocate a ghetto of alien refugees, which is sure to be a P.R. nightmare to say the least. Wikus is eager to please, nonetheless.
Wikus’s task goes off the rails on the first day as his nerdy curiosity leads him to be exposed to something exotic and dangerous. This entangles our main character in a violent struggle between forces. Wikus has to rethink his old priorities and allegiances to move forward and act heroically. The movie is ten years old and it could have been made yesterday.
Broadly, the movie follows a traditional heroes’ journey. Wikus has a normal life and is exposed to something exotic which demands he undertake a task. He tries to deny the call to action, but it is inevitable, and he can never return home again. By the end of the movie he is a changed person and he winds up back where the whole mess began but his perspective is completely different. He sacrifices his own wellbeing to save someone else.
District 9 is unique among action sci-fi movies in that it takes place largely in broad daylight. The movie feels profoundly realistic due to its similarity to television news and reality programing. I recall the film was widely hailed for being innovative in several ways, and above all shockingly inexpensive. Before this film, it seems special effects artists were intimidated by the daylight and tended to use darkness to increase the drama but also the believability of their effects.
This film has a few scenes in darkened rooms, but they are mostly interiors during the daytime. This means there are loads of little holes where light leaks in, as well as intentional windows and shades. Having such dark interiors during the obvious daylight adds realism to the idea of poverty. The lack of light is due to the lack of electricity.
To enhance the feeling of actual documentaries, the film uses a great deal of first-person shots from the point of view of the camera itself. This is a clear reference to news footage primarily. It also carries an interesting connection to youtube.com and the era of smartphones everywhere, even though it predates the widespread adoption. “Shakey-Cam” had still been around for a good while before District 9, so it was also a ‘nod’ to other films like Saving Private Ryan and similarly brutal war movies. The entire first act unfolds as if shot from a single camera following the main character. He speaks directly to the camera as well as the camera operator as he goes through his tasks, which adds a strange immersion to the viewer. All of his super-optimistic actions are interspliced with documentary-style interviews clearly conducted after some ‘event’ that has yet to occur. Intercutting between the stable shots of interview subjects and the unstable shots of our main character adds a large amount of tension and anticipation.
The audio similarly follows the feeling of a reality-tv performance. Characters address the camera directly, and other action happens overtop of the primary action. Crashes happen offscreen and the camera pans over quickly to see what made the sound.
I have seen this movie one time before, and it was in 2009, the year the movie came out. I remember how it was highly praised by several tastemakers for its outside approach to action/sci-fi on a truly achievable budget. It also connected reality with sci-fi in a way never before seen, and it took place in a somewhat obscure location. It was certainly a movie of interest in 2009, so I was curious to see how it had aged.
My first take is that District 9 is extremely violent in a disturbingly realistic way. I think much of the sci-fi enthusiasts of the world who praise this film might be forgetting about the middle portion. The final sequence involves literal lightning weapons and a robot exoskeleton in an elaborate gunfight, so one could be forgiven for not remembering how act two is a literal nightmare. The man has his fingernails fall out.
Overall, the movie made me feel very uncomfortable in a variety of ways. There is a great deal of gore and blood and exploding people, but I think the most horrifying scene is the three-minute surprise party for Wikus.
This scene highlights how I feel about District 9. It features some of the most amazingly effective action sequences of the last 30 years, possibly further. It also has some anxiety-inducing nightmare-fuel that cannot be unseen. I think it makes an interesting gesture towards meaningful social commentary, but I see no solutions or redemptions. Wikus is an everyman who gets caught up in something awful and there is no way back. He was a good guy doing a thankless job and everyone in his life abandons him when things go bad. He acts heroically to help the aliens, but his story is ultimately unsatisfying. I suppose he began treating the aliens with a dismissive, inhuman manner, but he was never a malicious sadist about it. He probably actually thought they would be better off at the new location.