weworemasks.

this summer has been full of disappointments as far as mainstream cinema goes. ladies and gentleman, i present to you the sleeper hit of the summer.

hit the jump for the recap.

-grizzly

i have to admit; after watching the trailer several weeks ago, i was kinda geeked out by it and wrote it off. it just seemed like another cloverfield-esque faux documentary. i guess it didn’t take long for me to realize that i absolutely loved cloverfield. not to mention, the plethora of friendly recommendations through word of mouth/facebook/wtfever and from repeat weekend viewings, i decided to see it at a matinee on this gloomy unemployed wednesday in texas.

district 9′s plot is based off of neill blomkamp’s short film alive in joburg, which you can watch here. anyway, bare with me. an alien mothership has been looming over the town for months, much to the confusion and speculation of many citizens. after the humans discover these aliens, the town placed them all in district 9 which had since become downtrodden and overall a fucking dump.

after growing weary of the violence and poverty, the government decides to intervene and basically stuff them all inside of a makeshift internment camp. to make sure i don’t ruin anything, let’s just say “conflict ensues.” field-op agent wikus is put in charge of serving up these aliens with eviction notices and having them relocated. played by sharlto copley, who i’ve found that hasn’t starred in anything besides d-9 and alive in joburg. copley did an incredible job at playing wikus, so i really hope to see him pop up in future movies.

d-9′s documentary stylings really worked as an advantage and gave it more of a realistic aesthetic. at no point in this movie did i feel underwhelmed or humored by the fact that there were aliens using guns. i mean, in hindsight, it’s funny that humans interviewed (and understood, mind you) the ‘prawns’ throughout the movie, but that’s besides the point. i went back and did some research today and found a bunch of viral sites that would’ve made seeing this movie for the first time THAT much more enjoyable, so be sure to check out some of those here and here.

the movie was a huge thriller and was far more interesting and executed a lot more flawlessly than a movie like transformers II, which was overhyped to shit. get to a theater asap and watch this.

grade: A-

trailer:

-grizzly