SPOLIERS

The current issue of Rue Morgue features a letter by someone who is still angry about the hype that sucked him into seeing THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Apparently, he thinks it was the filmmakers fault that every reviewer in the country proclaimed that little gem one of the most terrifying movies ever made. It wasn't their fault; the filmmakers crafted a nifty little movie with extremely limited resources. It wasn't their fault that critics turned off by the spate of horror flicks at that time responded so well to the film. Filmmakers make movies, they generally don't market them and in my experience, they don't review their own work, either. Like all art, once a film is "out there," it's also out of the creators' hands.

I tried to keep this in mind while watching DISTRICT 9 today. If you've read Entertainment Weekly or a zillion other reviews, you already know that DISTRICT 9 is the smartest science fiction film in years, and the best movie of the summer. I haven't seen many science fiction films the last few years, and I sure haven't seen many this summer (Well, there was WATCHMEN, which I loved), but if this sentiment is true, all I can say is that the state of American filmmaking is in even worse shape than I believed. DISTRICT 9 features brilliant direction by Neil Blomkamp and perhaps the best CGI I've seen. For those two reasons alone I recommend it. But "smart"? Don't believe the hype.

A giant spaceship "stalls" over Johannesburg. Its sickly occupants are relegated to ghettos. Apparently, no effort is made to communicate with them or to study them - they're just imprisoned because... wellm if they weren't, there would be no movie. Worse, when TV cameras record a giant chunk of the mothership crashing to earth, and no wreckage is found on the ground, the government shows little concern. What's to fear, right? Instead we get cinema verite footage of really well done aliens prowling through garbage and getting busted for petty crimes by cops that look like... COPS. Or TROOPERS.

Our hero is a likeable doofus named Wikus (played by affable Sharlto Copley, who reminded me of Timothy Balme in BRAIN DEAD/DEAD ALIVE, which was directed by Peter Jackson, who produced this). When Wikus discovers that one alien has decorated his ghetto home with computer keyboard, hard drives and monitors, he thinks the creature is guilty of pety theft. It never occurs to him that the thing is actually using the damned equipment. Worse, when Wikus discovers a strange alien container, he hold it up to his face, taking a blast of gas in his pie hole. And then he begins to turn into an exact copy of one of the aliens... beginning with his hand. This could have been the setup in an episode of the original OUTER LIMITS. Back in the 1980s, I read somewhere that filmed science fiction is usually thirty years behind written SF in terms of themes and intelligence. By my estimation, DISTRICT 9 is more like fifty years behind. Oh, it twists the notions of V and ALIEN NATION, but the alien hand thing could have been done (and may have) on LOST IN SPACE or VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.

But I don't want to suggest that DISRICT 9 is disappointingly stupid because it fails to meet up to the standard of contemporary written SF, because, frankly, I haven't read a "contemporary" science fiction novel... ever. I've only read the classics, mostly from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. No, DISTRICT 9 is stupid even by the standards of a modern action movie. When Wikus is on the run from his government, he whips out his cell phone to call his wife (who beleives he's mutating into an alien because the governemnt told her he was having close encounters of the fourth kind with the space captives). "Oh, no," I thought. "He doesn't even SUSPECT that the bad guys are listening in, and that they're going to use his cell phone as a tracking device." I needn't have worried; neither the villains nor this movie were that smart. No, Wikus is on the run for a full 48 hours before that even occurs to the G's top badass button man!

I have no doubt that DISTRICT 9 is "smarter" than, say, TRANSFORMERS, but t
hat isn't saying much. Social subtext - or in your face social criticism - is cool and welcome, and it was refreshing to see a SF film with human emotion, but this is what the media used to call a fun, dumb, summer blockbuster, albeit with better acting. Blomkamp is an amazing director, and I can't wait to see what he directs next, but I hope his next script gets a closer inspection before it goes before the cameras.

I guess we'll see in "three years," when the sequel arrives.