It occurs to me that really good science fiction movies don’t come along all that often. In this decade, there’s pretty much Children of Men and Serenity. And I mean, those are two great movies, but there’s only two of them, so. Except, I watched another one on Friday. The only problems I have with District 9 are that I have to figure out whether I liked it better than Children of Men and that I have to figure out how to talk about it without actually saying anything.

Because, see, this is a movie that I’m pretty sure is best seen cold. But that makes a weak review, so I’ll give you a little less than I got from the previews, and certainly no more than I got from the first ten minutes. Twenty years ago, a spacecraft carrying insectoid aliens in conspicuously refugee-like conditions appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Whether this was a true state of affairs or unfortunate human prejudice trumping the facts is neither answered nor even addressed by the often documentary-style film. All that matters is twenty years have passed during which the residents of Johannesburg have become gradually more disenchanted by the slum called District 9 to which all the “prawns” have been relegated after it became clear that their ship wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody wants to be subjected to the prawns’ presence or share any services with them, out of nothing more apparent than outright xenophobia, excepting only enterprising Nigerian[1] businessmen hoping to profit off the suffering and a multinational conglomerate who wants to unlock the secrets of their weapons tech.

So, that’s the setting. The film documents an approximate week during which the prawns are to be evicted from their slum and then moved to a new, designed camp with the bureaucratically original name of District 10, which has been set up 250 kilometers outside Johannesburg, conveniently out of sight and mind of all the disaffected human citizens. That’s about all I have to say, except that it is by turns horrible and deeply moving, has possibly my favorite child character of any movie in history, and did I mention that it is that rare gem of the cinematic experience, good science fiction?

[1] Seriously! They were identified specifically as Nigerians. I snickered.