Screenhead

Well, folks, I really, truly hadn’t thought it possible, but today, I actually saw something new and original come out of Hollywood.  In an era of remakes, reboots, reimaginings, and a whole bunch of other terms that start with the prefix meaning “again” that are all basically code for “we desperately want to keep our jobs so we’re only going to do what we know damn well will work”, anything truly new and different is at a premium.

District 9 is definitely at a premium.

The story is amazingly complex, yet still accessible–for reasons largely unknown, a race of aliens essentially washes up on Earth with no way to get home.  They’re an advanced race, with weapons of staggering power that they’re not really interested in using, and by all reports, they’re not here to hurt us or kill us or eat or enslave us…they just want to go home.  Seems most of these aliens are worker-caste aliens, so they don’t do so hot on things like “initiative” and “thinking for yourself”.

And that’s when the UN gets involved, or rather the general equivalent.  They in turn subcontract to MNU, a Blackwater-esque organization hired to secure the gulag in which the aliens have been placed.  And now, one MNU agent will become a whole lot closer to the alien problem than he ever imagined.

The best part about this movie, and here I will take issue with the New York Press’ critic Armond White, is that it manages to be just about everything to just about everybody.  It’s got the first-person behind-the-camera threat of Blair Witch, it’s got the action-smash of Independence Day, and it’s got all the vaguely Spielbergian benevolence of “higher beings”.

There’s really nothing out there like District 9, unless you count Alive In Joburg, the original short film from which District 9 was adapted.  And you can tell there’ll almost certainly be a sequel, and if it’s not called District 10 I believe I will eat my own hat.  District 9 is a really spectacular movie that’s going to have just about anything and just about everything you could want in a movie.  It will leave you satisfied, almost certainly.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives District 9 its namesake, a nine out of ten for being UNIQUE (Hollywood, take a lesson here–us critics just LOVE the new stuff!), and at the same time managing to pack in virtually everything anyone else could want.  Some things are worth taking a chance on.  This is one of them.

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