Although it’s an acknowledged sci-fi classic today, Neill Blomkamp’s future-shock Apartheid allegory seemed to arrive from out of absolutely nowhere 15 years ago.
Although it’s an acknowledged sci-fi classic today, Neill Blomkamp’s future-shock Apartheid allegory seemed to arrive from out of absolutely nowhere 15 years ago. (It wound up going all the way to the Oscars.) Sharlto Copley gives a stunning, star-is-born performance as a craven South African bureaucrat assigned to evict a race of segregated alien “prawn” people from their Johannesburg shantytown. The political and racial subtext is inescapable, but District 9 is also a bonkers feat of sci-fi imagination that will make you swear off shrimp forever.