This may well be the best sci-fi flick of the year. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, District 9 is an edge-of-your-seat alien thriller which brims with sheer intelligence and originality.

The astonishing story is set in South Africa where an alien ship has just arrived in Johannesburg, filled with starving and malnourished alien passengers. The humans take them in and place them in shantytown called District 9, where they are treated with disgust and distrust.  Soon, the government enacts laws to keep the aliens segregated from the humans.

But the aliens multiply and threaten to rebel against the rules enforced on them. When a white bureaucrat (Sharlto Copley) accidentally ingests an alien substance, he starts to turn into one of them. Slowly, he too begins to understand what it is like to be an alien…

District 9 is a terrific allegory for South African apartheid which separated the blacks and the whites for nearly half a century. The aliens are stand-in for the blacks who were oppressed by the white government for years before they started to revolt. 

That director Neill Blomkamp has managed to address a social issue in the form of a science-fiction actioner is nothing short of a triumph. That he made it for less than US$30million and it’s topped the US box-office with a US$37million gross in its first week alone is now the stuff of Hollywood legends. Don’t miss it.