District 9 is an action horror, follows an extraterrestrial race exiled to Earth until they discovered a similar being that is exposed to their biotechnology.
District 9 has too many gory vaporizations to qualify as a serious statement on race relations, but it does outclank Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen by a wide margin, and you thrill to the cleanly cut action sequences.
Blomkamp is good at mustering speedy action and posting grisly sight gags in the background, carnage always hovering comically at the edge of your vision. But I'm not sure that District 9 entirely gets the earthling racism out of its own system.
It's a brashly confident debut, full of sharp, inventive detail (the prawns are crazy for cat food) and rooted in a couple of Big Ideas. Well worth the time, if not all of it.
A gritty science-fiction film that features a population of humanoid crustacean-alien creatures [that] is far more grounded in reality than any of the current rom-coms currently unspooling in your neighbourhood multiplex.
Perhaps we're witnessing a new dawn for politically engaged sci-fi and horror, with Blomkamp as a latter-day George Romero. Either way, this is a stunningly impressive debut.