District 9 🎥 2009 Movie Info

Plot Summary

An enormous extraterrestrial spaceship arrives and hovers over the South African city of Johannesburg. Inside, an investigation team finds over a million malnourished insect-like aliens and the South African government relocates them to a camp called District 9. Over the years, District 9 becomes a slum, and locals come to view the aliens—derogatorily called “Prawns”—as filthy, violent animals who bleed resources from humans. Prawns have been treated like second-class citizens there and have been known to consume canned cat food. Following unrest between the aliens and locals, the government hires Multinational United, a large defense contractor, to relocate the aliens to a new camp outside the city.

Piet Smit, an MNU executive, appoints his son-in-law and MNU bureaucrat, Wikus van de Merwe, to lead the relocation. Meanwhile, three aliens named Christopher Johnson, his young son CJ, and Paul search a District 9 garbage dump for Prawn technology; Christopher has spent the last 20 years synthesizing fuel from their contents. They finally fill an entire container in Paul’s shack as the relocation begins, but when Wikus comes to serve Paul a notice, he finds the hidden container and accidentally sprays some fuel into his face. Koobus Venter, a cruel MNU mercenary who is speciesist against the Prawns, kills Paul. Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, starting with his left arm that was injured after the exposure.

He is taken to an underground MNU lab, where researchers discover his hybrid DNA grants Wikus the ability to operate Prawn weaponry, which is biologically restricted from humans. When there, Wikus discovers the grisly experiments the scientists were performing on the Prawns. Seeing the potential for profitable weapons research, Smit orders Wikus’s body to be harvested for genetic material. Wikus, however, overpowers the lab personnel and escapes. While Venter’s forces hunt him, a fake news story is broadcast claiming Wikus is a wanted fugitive.

Meet the Cast