District 9 Reviews

As an allegory of racial conflict and mass immigration, District 9 never really goes anywhere: The appealing premise fades into the background before 20 minutes have elapsed.

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Bounds from one contrivance to the next.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Intriguing but ultimately jejune space-bug yarn

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Overall, with aliens that look like a crossbreed of roaches and lobsters, District 9 is a bad episode of Star Trek meets an insipid Apartheid mini-series. This was one disappointing sci-fi spectacle.

Full Review | Original Score: D

The film threads enough thoughtful commentary into its whirligig media-fractured action plot to mostly make up for its lapses into cliché.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

...A fascinating opening hooks you completely....And then, [director Neil] Blomkamp and his cohort[co-writer Terri Tatchel] run out of original ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

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.

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The movie falls into the same uneasy category as Eight Legged Freaks: too tongue-in-cheek to be thrilling, not funny enough to be a comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It has some terrific thrills and it's probably worth a video rental, but overall it's yet another case of action over ideas and messages over emotions.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

There's a wonderfully sly, farcical verve to these early moments, but it dissipates when the script, with its strains of E.T. and The Fly, moves into high sci-fi gear.

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District 9's City of God meets War of the Worlds hybrid proves overbearing and under-convincing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

As an action director, Blomkamp is no John Carpenter. Parts of the story are not dramatised but narrated direct-to-camera by supposed interview subjects -- a lazy device that reduces immediacy and momentum.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Has some original moments but overall it fails to impress.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

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.

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Is there anyone--prawn or human--that we in the audience are prompted to care about?

Full Review | Original Score: C

Its early allegory may be blunt, but its second half begs for something even as heavy-handed as that to keep it involving.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema -- the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture.

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It's a bad joke that District 9 will be hailed for its "originality." The movie's main fun comes from wondering what coin of the pop realm Blomkamp will pluck out from his memory bank next.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

In District 9, racism provides the white guy with a very special growth experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

The fresh premise over, the stale action returns.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

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