It’s not as if Peter Jackson has been resting on his laurels after the filming of Lord of the Rings.  And in this 1 hour and 50 some minute sci-fi fantasy thriller, he unveils his best effort since those films were completed some six or so years ago. The subject of racism and resident aliens is given a new spin here when we are talking about actual aliens, in a country, South Africa where the wounds of apartheid are still open, or at best healing. But there is another, old sci-fi theme which actually is undergirding the plot of this movie— namely that the aliens are more human than the humans, even though, in this movie instead of looking like cute little E.T. they look like jumbo shrimp— indeed they are called prawns by the South Africans in this movie.

Let’s start with some disclaimers: 1) this movie is far too violent to take any squeamish person, never mind children to see; 2) this movie is done in documentary form to give it a special sense of realism, and this works.  Caveat emptor, you may leave the movie looking around for aliens in the parking lot.  Jackson and Neil Blomkamp know how to make even the implausible look possible and real; 3) strictly speaking this movie is more of a Blomkamp feature, and is based on an award winning story by him, which Jackson admired.  No doubt Jackson is the muscle that got this movie made; 4) if you are expecting some comic relief at points in this movie, abandon hope. This is non-stop action, and one is stunned into silence and shock as one just waits for what will come next. Having said all of this, this movie is so provocative and creative at the same time, it is bound to be an award winner, and I expect it may well become a classic of a sort, like say the dark film Blade Runner.

Ideally, one would want to watch this movie with South Africans, and particularly with Afrikaaners, because this movie is bound to be too close to the bone for them. If one simply substituted black South Africans for aliens, the attitudes about the aliens in this movie and their treatment would seem like an instant replay of the bad old days during apartheid in various respects. Indeed, the major set where this movie is filmed looks for all the world like Soweto (it is supposedly set somewhere outside Johannesburg).  

The acting, especially of the central character, an Afrikaaner governmental agent named Vickers is first rate, and the storyline is both gripping and arresting.  What would you do, if you discovered your own government had used you to find a way to do medical and chemical experiments of a gross and inhumane sort on basically defenseless aliens in a concentration camp and then you were forced to help them move to an even worse concentration camp?  Would your humanity prevail over your loyalty to your own government? 

In various ways this story may well remind you of Kafka’s famous tale about metamorphosis. at least when it comes to Vickers in this plot. And one can generate some empathy for him at least, as he loses the life and the wife he loves in the process of his being betrayed and becoming the object himself of experimentation. 

At the beginning of the summer we had the reboot of  Star Trek, and this was fun and left you begging for more.  At the end of the summer we have sci fi of a very different sort that left you crying ‘no mas.’  But it will be the latter film that will leave the more lasting impact, I’ll bet you a prawn cocktail.