District 9 (R16)

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This challenging, unusual close encounter of the third kind – from South African director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp – has the cinema verite visual style of recent horror flicks Cloverfield and Quarantine, a story with a bit of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and an underlying metaphor about South African apartheid.

The story is set in Johannesburg, 20 years after a gigantic spaceship came to a standstill over the city and the ailing aliens inside it were relocated to a quarantine area that became a giant slum. Government authorities want to move them to a concentration camp in the desert, the operation being run by an enthusiastic but bumbling official who is accidentally contaminated by an alien liquid.

The aliens here could be any people forced to live in squalor while suffering from a xenophobic regard as a lower lifeform. But the film's satire doesn't usurp what is primarily an unpredictable, increasingly gripping and original sci-fi thriller with its share of action, explosion and firepower. It's not a movie you're likely to forget.

• Reviewed by David Manning. DVDs for review supplied by United Video, Nelson.

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