Movies like District 9 come along rarely. They're the movies that come from nowhere, that cut through the shit, that deliver on almost every single level you'd want a movie to deliver. It's a film that intoxicates you not just with story and action but with craft. It's a movie that reminds you that you don't need a zillion dollar budget and an army of Hollywood stars to make a film that connects, that thrills, that excites.

Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, two decades after aliens came to Earth, District 9 isn't subtle; writer/director Neill Blomkamp is telling a story that's massively influenced by his own experience growing up in an apartheid society and watching the aftermath of that society's downfall. Producer Peter Jackson said something at Comic Con that really reverberated with me - while many young directors make movies about the movies they've seen, Blomkamp has made a movie about his life. That is a huge part of why District 9 feels so fresh, even though much of its original set-up comes from the underrated Alien Nation.

When the alien ship came to a stop over Joburg the world held its breath to see what would come next. Everyone waited. And waited. After three months an effort was made to break into the ship, which was found to be filled with starving extraterrestrials. Disparagingly called Prawns because of their shellfish look, these aliens were drones and unable to do much for themselves. Their queen had disappeared.

The Prawns were moved into a makeshift ghetto; their lives soon turned pathetic and hardscrabble as they became addicted to cat food, as they sold their alien weapons (usable only by those with alien DNA) on the black market and scratched out shitty lives behind barbed wire. As the film opens the people of Joburg have had about enough of the Prawns, who are seen as shiftless and criminal and dangerous and sucking taxes from the law-abiding citizens. The MNU, a multinational corporation tasked with dealing with the Prawns, is preparing to move them to a new ghetto outside of the city. And that's when things go really wrong for Wikus Van De Merwe, the administrator in charge of the whole thing.

Newcomer Shelto Copley plays Wikus and it's an amazing performance. The character transforms from a bumbling buffoon to a heartbreaking disaster and Copley never misses a beat. He's funny and infuriating and sympathetic and irritating, all in good measure. In true science fiction morality fashion this mildly racist bureaucrat (and props to Blomkamp for not making him a drooling hater. We live in a time when people who are flamingly racist hide behind all sorts of excuses and veneers of civility) gets sprayed with alien juice that slowly begins morphing him into one of them. For one Prawn with a plan this is a disaster, and for MNU his sudden ability to wield alien weapons is amazing. But for Wikus it's a body horror nightmare that gets downright Cronenbergian at times (with nods to the original The Fly, as one of Wikus' arms quickly turns alien and he must constantly conceal it).

In many ways District 9 is a one man show, with Copley playing against mostly CGI aliens, and it's completely riveting. The film includes insane action beats - the aliens have guns that simply splatter humans - but the human (for want of a better, more overarching term) beats are just as compelling. Blomkamp starts his film as a psuedo-mockumentary, and the way the Prawns are portrayed makes it easy to be disgusted by them. It's a credit to Blomkamp (and co-writer Terri Tatchell) that he's able to make us truly feel for the Prawns without suddenly turning them into an angelic race or revealing that all of the disgusting things about them were propaganda. While I've heard the film referred to as a scifi The Defiant Ones, Blomkamp is no Stanley Kramer; sure, some of the race and class stuff is simplistic, but it's not the kind of grey-area-free fare Kramer trafficked in. Even in the final minutes of the movie you're questioning your sympathy for Wikus, and it's a brave film that does that.

Of course in the final minutes you're also cheering like a mad person as the movie - budgeted at just 30 million dollars - explodes in an incredible battle that rivals anything else this summer. There's a giant mechasuit and heavy weaponry and competing factions and huge amounts of juicy, bloody splattering (the camera gets doused in liquefied human remains more than once). Blomkamp shows a remarkable eye for action, crafting scenes that carry emotional weight and cathartic oomph. There are moments in that final battle that are simply iconic and classic.

As is the entire movie itself. I fear giving in to hyperbole, but District 9 invites it to the extent that I am more afraid of underpraising a movie I'm sure will be regarded as a science fiction classic. Walking out of the theater I knew I had seen history being made; at the very least Blomkamp is going to be a major force in the film industry. The FX work is impeccable; there were no practical alien suits or animatronic heads, something I found hard to believe. Between the excellent FX and Blomkamp's skill at making the Prawns into characters and not just part of a CGI showreel I utterly forgot I was watching a movie with special effects. That's an astonishing feat.

But beyond that this is a movie that will fire imaginations of generations of would-be filmmakers. It presents a world so deeply textured and thoroughly thought out that it will inspire years of obsessive fandom to sift through every reference, to fill in every blank. And it ends on a note that demands a sequel; while the movie is complete and total in itself and can stand alone, the possibilities for what could come next are so spine-tinglingly intriguing that I'm all but begging for the next film. District 9 is an amazing movie, one that will sweep you up emotionally and intellectually, that will give you plenty to think over and even more to marvel at. It's an achievement that needs to be seen to be believed, and once it's seen it's guaranteed to be beloved.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the best films of the first decade of the 21st century.

10 out of 10