District 9

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⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Rebecca)

Watched this on a whim while I was home alone, just as something to do while I ate supper, and ended up LOVING it. I was invested right from the start. It's partially done in a documentary/found footage style, and is about the attempted forced relocation of a huge alien civilization that has become stranded on earth and is residing in a slum in South Africa. The main character, a dorky and awkward employee of the agency that's supposed to be relocating the aliens to a new camp farther from the city, of course gets caught up things after being exposed to some strange alien tech.

Everything about it was so good--the unique setting, the blatant refugee allegory, the character development, the main alien being named Christopher Johnson for some reason. It's pretty graphic at times (like, a lot of exploding heads and some gross body horror), but despite the premise, I was shocked by how realistic it felt. Like yeah, humans WOULD react like this about aliens. This IS how things would play out, if I had to guess. I really enjoyed it, and I think it was incredibly done considering it was made in 2009.

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