District 9, from producer Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) and director Neil Blomkamp, is a startlingly original science fiction thriller.

With stunning special effects this grittily-realistic film plunges us into a world where aliens have landed... only to be exiled to a slum on the fringes of Johannesburg.

But one lone human discovers the mysterious secret of the extraterrestrial weapon technology.

Hunted and hounded through the bizarre back alleys of an alien shantytown, he will discover what it means to be the ultimate outsider on your own planet.

I personally was not really up for this movie, however I must say I was pleasently surprised by it. The actors are not mainstream, or for that matter well-known, to me anyway, but the lead character gives an outstanding performance sort of a South African David Brent, making you loathe him to start with, to feeling sorry for him as his organised life comes apart at the seams.

Without giving to much of the plot and storyline away I can only describe it as The Fly meets a modern day The Colour Purple meets Alien Nation, perhaps not the best analogy but I can't think at this moment in time for a better film about racism and apartheid.

Once you get used to the documentary style of filming it becomes very real, and believable.

It's a 15 certificate and some of the more gory scenes re the aliens eating and getting blown up are not advisable while eating a curry etc, but as you get drawn into the film it all becomes quite startlingly believable!

Mainly because it's not necessarily the aliens that are the worrying factor but the reactions to them by the humans.

10/10