District 9: What if those we made first contact with were refugees?
District 9 presents an interesting premise - what if the first aliens to contact us were refugees? How the world reacts and segregates them is fascinating. Neill Blomkamp presents the location of District 9 as a rundown South African slum, where these refugees experience violence daily and oppression from MNU, a local government that oversees them. Blomkamp puts a lot of effort into the culture and visual look of the Prawns, and even though the CGI for them hasn't aged perfectly, they fit perfectly into each shot. The visual effects are pretty good, and there's some awesome prosthetics as well. The story mostly follows a man obsessed with the Prawns who starts to transform into one after coming into contact with some of their chemicals. He's on the run from the MNU and gets to see firsthand how Prawns are actually treated under this government system. Plenty of ideas are presented here, but I think a whole 20 minutes or so could have been cut out of this. M