50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

The film that launched director Neill Blomkamp’s career, District 9 takes us into the slums of Johannesburg, where a group of sick and malnourished illegal aliens are penned up in an internment camp. This sounds all too familiar, and yet District 9’s illegal aliens are bona fide insectoid aliens from outer space, known derogatively by the locals as “Prawns”.

After the government hires defence contractor Multinational United (MNU) to relocate the aliens outside the city, dozy MNU bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) finds himself leading the relocation. Hit in the face by a special fuel the peaceful aliens have been developing, Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, bringing him face-to-face with the reality of their subjugation.

This is an alien invasion movie in which the aliens are not just the good guys, but are subjected to precisely the kind of cruelties we would never want to admit to, but which are far more likely than welcoming them with open arms. District 9 doesn’t just play as a cipher for apartheid South Africa, but offers a hard look at the way we use perceived differences to create insurmountable barriers between ourselves and others.

If made today, there would be a massive online backlash against it, with everyone complicit in this kind of behaviour feeling called out; but as it stands, District 9 has slotted into the canon as a modern sci-fi classic, with every other person who saw it ignoring its core message.