We saw it a couple of months ago. I thought it would be the usual earth people vs aliens cowboy style shoot 'em up. It was all of that to the max, but it was also complex, subtle, and had a couple of layers of meaning. It starts when an alien space ship is stranded on earth. The aliens are terrifyingly different, violent and strange. They're intelligent, but savage at the same time. They're near death, having been trapped on their ship without food or power. The humans (near Johannesburg, South Africa) do what they can to help them and then contain them in a combination refugee/POW camp, where conditions are horrible. Things there seethe, fester, and boil over. It's that scary situation when one part of the population is being brutalized to the point where you expect them to butcher their oppressors.

Somewhere in the movie our perspective of the aliens changes. We start to see them as people who are desperate and oppressed, hoping to get some help so they can go home. They don't want what the humans have, they want their own lives back.
It was filmed in Soweto, an area of Johannesburg where the black South African residents were forced out and their homes bulldozed during the time of apartheid. This gives it an authenticity it wouldn't have on a created set. It was filmed in a documentary style that's also very effective. The shacks and shanties are real, the junk piled all over is real, the wreckage is real. The prejudice and misery were very real. There's a level where this movie is about apartheid, about fear and ignorance, and the traps we make for ourselves out of our hate. This is the best kind of science fiction, the one that asks questions about who we are and how we treat each other and where we're going.
Here's a link to the official site. District 9 You can see the trailer and play around and click on things.
To make things less scary here's a picture of Pretty Mimi. Ahhh, all better. That movie scared me 10 ways.
