Film Threat

The humanity of District 9 adds another dimension to this multilayered, rewarding work -- one of the best of the summer, and undoubtedly the most inventive from the multiplex this year.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Madly original, cheekily political, altogether exciting District 9.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

No true fan of science fiction -- or, for that matter, cinema -- can help but thrill to the action, high stakes and suspense built around a very original chase movie.

Film Threat by Matthew Sorrento

The humanity of District 9 adds another dimension to this multilayered, rewarding work -- one of the best of the summer, and undoubtedly the most inventive from the multiplex this year.

Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey

District 9 is very smart sci-fi, but that's just the beginning; it's also a scathing social satire hidden inside a terrific action thriller teeming with gross aliens and regrettable inter-species conflict. And it's a blast. . . .

Time by Richard Corliss

District 9 proves that genre films, besides being a hell of a lot of fun, can say things you hadn't considered and show stuff you haven't seen.

San Francisco Chronicle by Amy Biancolli

Every now and then, a film comes along that both defies and compels description. District 9 is one such movie: a science-fiction action vehicle so brilliantly and fully imagined that real life, when it resumes after the credits, arrives with a new sense of dread.

Washington Post by John Anderson

A sci-fi-fueled indictment of man's inhumanity to man -- and the non-human -- District 9 is all horribly familiar, and transfixing.

New Orleans Times-Picayune by Mike Scott

To his credit, however, the often-playful Blomkamp never bludgeons his audience with any specific message. He's too busy letting 'er rip with his edge-of-your-seat, and unapologetically violent, sci-fi adventure.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

This is a delicious premise, and Blomkamp, who first played with it in a 2005 short called "Alive in Joburg," has magnified and improved it with ferocious energy, wit and style.

Village Voice

District 9 whizzes by with a resourcefulness and mordant wit nearly worthy of its obvious influences: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Dawn of the Dead," and "Starship Troopers."

Variety by Justin Chang

Though compelling throughout, District 9 never becomes outright terrifying, largely because Blomkamp is less interested in exploiting his aliens for cheap scares than in holding up a mirror to our own bloodthirsty, xenophobic species.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

Blomkamp and his entire cast and crew have created an instant genre classic that transcends the self-limiting ghetto implied by the term "science fiction" and instead, like precursors such as Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," engages not only the mind but the heart as well. It's magnificent.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

South African director Neill Blomkamp set and shot the film around his native Johannesburg, so parallels to apartheid leap to mind. Yet the script he wrote with Terri Tatchell applies to any culture that bluntly excludes another.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Anyone who watches District 9 and doesn't think of Apartheid, Nazis, and Josef Mengele needs to spend some time reading a few history books.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Joe Williams

The reason District 9 reverberates so loudly is because its moral indignation is cranked to 11.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Despite its creativity, the movie remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction.