The above production still from District 9 a film produced by Peter Jackson and written and directed by 3D special effects artist Neill Blomkamp went up on Coming Soon without me paying much attention. Talk about the ShoWest trailer had me intrigued, but I’m not gonna lie; the way ti was described I thought it was going to be some sort of “aliens used to live here” mocumentary. Sort of if Cloverfield met 60 minutes.

That being said, I wasn’t far off in the plot/style department, but WAYYYY off in the coolness department. The more this movie’s advertising evolves, the more interesting it gets and the more I move District 9 up my list of badass sci-fi to take in this summer.

The first teaser graced the webs last week and piqued my interest by coming on like a documentary about immigration…until they showed me a huge spaceship and an alien I couldn’t understand with a pixelated face.

If that wasn’t cool enough, and it was, IMDB released and then pulled an “uncensored” and subtitled version of the trailer, which actually added pathos to the alien by showing his face and letting us know that the humans are keeping the aliens on Earth, in District 9, seemingly against their will.

I’m interested in this movie and the preview hasn’t even breached the Kafka-esque plotline. The movie takes place in South Africa, where a man is sent to do an investigation within the alien district. He’s infected by some kind of alien bio agent, and learns enough about the condition of the aliens’ lives to start fighting against humans on their behalf, possibly by slowly turning into one.

Nifty huh?

I think so.

Nothing like sci-fi with awesome effects, sympatheti aliens and a timely immigration theme.