by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: August 19, 2009   Last Updated: October 04, 2009

An alien ship stranded due to malfunction and lack of fuel hovers above Johannesburg, South Africa for over twenty years. The aliens discovered starving and dehydrated inside are derisively called "Prawns" by humans and then are forced to relocate to District 9, a squalid refugee camp below.

Prey to the intolerance of locals and continually exploited by underworld profiteers, life is miserable yet the "Prawns" are still blamed for much of their own difficulties.

A second government relocation program farmed out to private company MNU attempts to move the alien visitors again, further from the city. Heading up the program is Wikus Van De Merwe (Copley)- a mousy, incompetent pencil pusher whom is utterly boundless in his ignorance and thoughtless cruelty. He just happens to be married to his bosses daughter (Haywood).

Wikus is engaged in the normal activity of his new job leading a group of mercenary thugs in the employ of MNU to roust the aliens from the refugee camp to one that is more like a concentration camp. With sneering contempt he conducts his vile pogrom. I can tell you that some scenes of that portion of the film made me nauseous.

MNU has no interest in the well-being of the aliens and in fact is interested in utilising the alien technology for resale. The technology however only works when the aliens use it because it is co-ordinated with their DNA. This is established through a long process of brutal (and generally fatal) experiments on kidnapped aliens by MNU scientists.

Wikus inadvertently becomes the key to harnassing the alien technology when during one of his raids he becomes infected with a fluid that blends his DNA with that of the aliens.

While projectile vomiting pitch black fluid, his nails and teeth begin failing out, making the party to celebrate his promotion much less enjoyable for everyone, particularly his beautiful yet childlike wife Tania.

Hospitalised, Wikus is spirited out to MNU's secret labs where he is subjected to many of the same experiments as those performed on the aliens. He is given an involuntary crash course in alien weaponry in the process of the scientists trying to see if it works. "What happens to him now is unimportant" is their attitude. This proves to become a critical turn of events when he escapes.

He goes to District 9, the one place where he thinks MNU won't look for him because after the way he has treated the aliens that should be suicide, right? He can't leave as his photo has been circulated and he is

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