Wanted: In District 9 Sharlto Copley plays a man whose altered DNA forces him to seek the help of the aliens he evicted

Rating: 4/5

Cert: 15, 112min

Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope

District 9 is a film in which people’s heads explode on a regular basis. It features advanced alien weaponry, a giant mothership, Nigerian voodoo, evil corporations, a lead character whose hand turns into a claw, and an alien race addicted to cat food.

At one point, a pig is flung at great force by a half-man, half-creature wearing an ­alien robot suit (as a tractor beam is drawing his alien friend skywards), fatally injuring the squaddie goon who was trying to kill him.

I mean, what kind of way is that to die? How do you write that up in the day’s incident report?

All of which would point to District 9 – with no major stars and a first-time director – ­being a very silly film indeed. In fact, it’s one of the best sci-fi films in years.

Here’s the background. A few years back, Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson was working with Neill Blomkamp, a young South African director of commercials and music videos, on a film ­version of videogame Halo. That never came off, but Blomkamp impressed Jackson so much that when he pitched the idea for an unconventional film that fused South ­Africa’s social ­problems with sci-fi, Jackson ­decided to produce, letting his protege take the reins. The ­result is that ­satisfying thing: a film that is wildly original but knows originality is a dish best served cold.

It has the usual leap-of-faith set-up. Aliens arrived 20 years ago, but as refugees, and they haven’t integrated, ­living in a segregated Soweto-style shanty town called District 9 in ­Johannesburg. But everything that follows has the sharp ring of truth, never lapsing into action-film cliche, ­wearing its satire lightly, and mixing mockumentary with CGI and real news footage to create something tense and very uncomfortable.

From the first scene, you know you’re in good hands with Blomkamp. We get a shot of our “hero” – an ­officious, moustached man in a tanktop called Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley). He works for Multi-National United, a private company responsible for shifting the aliens to a new camp. Any other director would have made him a chiselled hunk, and his HQ a testament to spotless technology. But Blomkamp doesn’t – Wikus is an administrator after all, so he looks like one, and his ­office could be doling out driving licences.

When he gets accidentally sprayed with a mysterious ­liquid that begins to turn him alien – a wonderfully disturbing bit of Cronenbergian body-horror this (District 9 features several nods to The Fly) – he suddenly becomes the most wanted man on the planet. He’s the only one who can use the alien’s advanced weapons, which require alien DNA, and his agency wants to run the kind of tests he ain’t waking up from. The only place to hide? District 9.

Sure, the film then technically ­becomes a chase flick as Wikus discovers an alien who might be his only hope, but it’s one that constantly pulls in unexpected directions. Hope is all too often crushed and sentimentality always second to survival. We’re told early on that “there are a lot of secrets in District 9” but Blomkamp never resorts to uncovering them. To do so would cheapen his film and make you think a problem so huge could be ­resolved by their discovery.

District 9 ends instead with a promise yet to be ­fulfilled. There’s hope, sure, but ­Blomkamp doesn’t deal in the hope that lets us sleep soundly. Like the rest of ­District 9, it’s the one that brings uneasy dreams.