District 9 (2009)

All Critics (259) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (239) | Rotten (24) | DVD (17)

You don't feel bamboozled, fooled, or patronized by District 9, as you did by most of the summer blockbusters. You feel winded, shaken, and shamed.

September 7, 2009 Full Review | Comments (19)

Anthony Lane

New Yorker

Top Critic

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.

September 4, 2009 Full Review | Comments (4)

Tom Huddlestone

Time Out

Top Critic

To call this the best shrimp-from-outer-space South African apartheid allegory ever made does not begin to do it justice. But it's a start.

August 17, 2009 Full Review

David Edelstein

New York Magazine

Top Critic

This is a great movie.

August 17, 2009 Full Review | Comments (4)

Ben Mankiewicz

At the Movies

Top Critic

What an achievement in filmmaking.

August 17, 2009 Full Review | Comments (11)

Ben Lyons

At the Movies

Top Critic

The backstory beats the hell out of the present-tense plot, a routine affair in which a well-meaning doofus working for the Man is infected with a virus, starts turning into an alien himself, and falls in with the oppressed creatures.

August 14, 2009 Full Review | Comments (130)

J. R. Jones

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

Smart, funny, touching, thought-provoking and utterly insane in the action department, District 9 is 2009's most entertaining movie by a light year.

September 29, 2012 Full Review

Ali Gray

TheShiznit.co.uk

Despite its shortcomings, District 9 is an engaging sci-fi romp that features solid CGI work.

February 26, 2012 Full Review

James Plath

Movie Metropolis

A rocking, rolling action drama about alien castaways that just want to go home, an evil corporation that wants to capitalize on them at any cost, and one man who freakishly gets caught in the middle.

September 29, 2011 Full Review

Neil Pond

American Profile

District 9 has the potential to satisfy two mutually exclusive groups of bottom-feeding moviegoers.

August 29, 2011 Full Review

Kelly Vance

East Bay Express

District 9 isn't without its rough edges. It's a bit obvious and doesn't take as full advantage of its premise as it could. But it's also a visually spectacular and cares mostly about its characters, and that's a rare thing in film today.

March 18, 2011 Full Review

Joshua Starnes

ComingSoon.net

Part alien invasion flick, part social commentary, Neill Blomkamp's chilling, thrilling District 9 is a wholly original work. And it features a star-making turn from Sharlto Copley.

February 14, 2011 Full Review

David N. Butterworth

rec.arts.movies.reviews

Aliens clash with humans in combustible sci-fier.

January 3, 2011 Full Review

Don Groves

sbs.com.au

Although the film is dripping in satire, Blomkamp is more concerned with delivering a balls-to-the-wall action film. District 9 has more in common with Aliens than Babel.

October 27, 2010 Full Review

Simon Miraudo

Quickflix

The most audacious, auspicious sci-fi debut in years, Neill Blomkamp's modest-budget "District 9" throws together xenophobic satire, political allegory and raucous action in a knockabout package reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven's finest work.

September 25, 2010 Full Review

Nick Rogers

Suite101.com

District 9 is the most original, innovative and entertaining science-fiction film in years and contains the best mix of politics and spectacle since Starship Troopers.

July 6, 2010 Full Review | Comments (5)

Thomas Caldwell

Cinema Autopsy

Best when it operates as yarn rather than as social commentary, even if it is filled with logical inconsistencies.

June 15, 2010 Full Review

Louis Proyect

rec.arts.movies.reviews

Screw Avatar - this is what people will think of when they talk about science fiction at the end of the aughts.

March 6, 2010 Full Review | Comments (15)

Rob Humanick

Projection Booth

While the ambitious narrative bites off far more than can be satisfactorily chewed and digested, the fantastic ride through what must be a completely fictional world (right?) is worth a view.

February 10, 2010 Full Review | Comments (2)

S. James Wegg

JWR

While Blomkamp's disturbing thriller does have a semi-revelatory ending, the real secret is that District 9, for all its pomp and circumstance, is no more than a decent but scrappy science fiction flick.

January 6, 2010 Full Review | Comments (8)

Jordan Hiller

Bangitout.com

Artsy vertigo, racial profiling from outer space, black on prawn violence, Nigerian gangsters into cannibalistic health food diets, and inter-species creature sex for sale. And no, I did not have sex with that alien.

December 27, 2009 Full Review | Comments (12)

Prairie Miller

NewsBlaze

The disconnect between the first and second half of the movie shows you how great District 9 could have been, if Jackson and his financial backers had allowed it, instead of what it is, exciting, but with nothing lingering in the mind after it was over.

December 25, 2009 Full Review | Comments (2)

Adam Lippe

Examiner.com

• 1. Christopher Johnson: [subtitled] Three years. I promise.
  – Submitted by Cameron D (6 months ago)
• 1. Christopher Johnson: [subtitled] Keep the fuck away from my child!
  – Submitted by Cameron D (6 months ago)
• 1. Christopher Johnson: [subtitled] It took twenty years to collect that amount.
  2. Wikus van der Merwe: Fuck, man, FUCK!
  – Submitted by Cameron D (6 months ago)
• 1. Christopher Johnson: [subtitled] You said you had a way out!
  2. Wikus van der Merwe: I never said anything about a way out! I promised you a way in!
  – Submitted by Cameron D (7 months ago)
• 1. Wikus van der Merwe: I said I would pull it.
  – Submitted by Cameron D (7 months ago)
• 1. Christopher Johnson: We can't go home. Not anymore.
  – Submitted by Typhon Q (8 months ago)