“District 9” is an interesting film about Earth’s first encounter with aliens and is somewhat of a cross between “Escape from New York” and “The Fly” but sadly it stumbles at times and never really hits the mark.

Filmed like a documentary throughout, “District 9” tells the story of Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharlto Copley “The A-Team”) as he leads an operation to evict a bunch of aliens nicknamed ‘Prawns’ from a slum in Johannesburg so they can be placed in a concentration camp outside the city. Wikus is exposed to some of the aliens’ technology and begins mutating so now he’s on the run.

Wikus starts off as a polite young man but as the film goes on, his lines include a highly frequent use of bad language and this is a real shame as it proves the filmmakers couldn’t think of anything interesting for him to say. I kind of like the idea that the first group of aliens that mankind meets, lack any kind of grandness to them but unfortunately, they seem awfully bland and that’s a massive shock because “Escape from New York”, which I mentioned above, showcased a great level of culture that had been developed by criminals in a similar situation. The other characters in the film didn’t appeal to me either.

I like some of the ideas and I really like the high-tech guns but that’s about it. I get the government want the weapons and some way to get them from the aliens but they clearly wish to get rid of them as they intend to place them in concentration camps so why don’t the aliens, when they find out about this, just admit that they have found a way to go home? It’s questions like these that can severely damage a sci-fi flick and “District 9” wasn’t doing too well to begin with.