Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley, left) and his associates (Mandla Gaduka, centre, and Kenneth Nkosi) prepare to clear out an alien slum in the South African sci-fi film District 9. (TriStar/Sony Pictures)

With its clever viral marketing campaign – which includes bogus websites and blogs and ominous “For Humans Only” signs in bus shelters and subways – District 9 has had the most intriguing build-up since last year’s Cloverfield. It turns out that isn’t the only thing the two movies have in common. Like Cloverfield, District 9 takes a fresh stab at a standard science-fiction blueprint – in this case, the alien invasion – and breathes new life into it.

When was the last time you saw an FX-laden sci-fi thriller set in South Africa that was a parable of apartheid?

Where Cloverfield finally felt like a novelty (Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project), District 9 is far more ambitious – and audacious. When was the last time you saw an FX-laden sci-fi thriller set in South Africa and presented as a parable of apartheid?

Written and directed by neophyte Neill Blomkamp, District 9 posits an extraterrestrial visit gone wrong. Twenty years earlier, a flying saucer arrived over the skies of Johannesburg, crammed not with invaders but, apparently, refugees. The weak, malnourished aliens were transported by the military to the city district of the title, where they’ve since lived as second-class citizens.

Now, growing tensions between humans and aliens have led the government to launch a mass evacuation of District 9, forcing its inhabitants to move to a concentration camp outside the city. Those who know their modern South African history will see obvious parallels with District Six, the Cape Town ghetto whose black residents were forcibly relocated under the apartheid regime. The “resettlement” of the Jews during the Holocaust also comes to mind.

The District 9 clearance has been contracted out to a private military firm, Multinational United (MNU), and the guy in charge of the job is the boss’s Afrikaner son-in-law, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a nerdy, officious bumbler and the movie’s unlikely protagonist. While raiding an alien hideout, butterfingered Wikus accidentally sprays himself with the contents of a mysterious cylinder. Before he knows it, he’s oozing black mucus, losing his fingernails and watching his left hand morph into a giant claw. In other words, he’s transforming into one of the aliens, whose crustacean-like features have earned them the pejorative “prawns.”

Wikus is suddenly a valuable guinea pig for his devious MNU superiors, whose real interest is in the aliens’ arsenal – powerful weapons that can only be operated by someone with alien DNA. When he escapes the clutches of MNU’s ruthless medical researchers (shades of Auschwitz), Wikus flees back to District 9. There, he ends up forming an alliance with an alien scientist and the alien’s precocious little son.

Refugee aliens are forced to live in apartheid-like conditions in District 9. (TriStar/Sony Pictures)

Blomkamp, a young South African-Canadian, makes a startlingly assured feature debut. Prior to this, he was a Vancouver-based visual-effects whiz, best known for creating a series of short films based on the Halo video game. District 9 is an elaboration on a six-minute short, Alive in Joburg, that he cooked up in 2005. And “elaboration” is the right word. Where Cloverfield’s more experienced makers stuck to their single, caught-on-camcorder conceit, Blomkamp frames his story as a multi-layered faux-documentary – a frenetic mosaic of talking heads, television clips, grainy closed-circuit images and plenty of rough, in-the-field camera footage.

Done on a comparatively modest budget of $30 million, the design and digital effects are no less impressive. The ghetto of the title is a vividly conceived slum, a sweltering, fly-ridden shantytown ruled by Nigerian gangs that exploit the downtrodden aliens. The aliens themselves are more freakish than threatening. At first they appear comically repulsive, their mouths a bunch of squirming tentacles. (Actually, they look a little like Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama.) But after a while, as for any victims, you start to feel for them. The alien scientist, dubbed Christopher Johnson by the humans, turns out to be a heroic rebel bent on freeing his fellow aliens. And his son is a cutie.

Blomkamp and his co-writer, Terri Tatchell, open with a sharply satiric tone. Wikus’s goofy chatter as he guides a camera crew through the evacuation provokes laughs but fails to hide the brutality of the MNU forces as they flush out confused and frightened aliens. The film also takes a Cronenberg-style delight in gross details. Wikus’s repulsive metamorphosis has echoes of The Fly, but also of Kafka in the poor man’s horror and self-disgust.

However, as the action progresses the story begins to lapse into familiar stereotypes and tropes. There’s a one-note military baddie who pursues Wikus with single-minded viciousness, and a predictable succession of firefights involving alien super-weapons that blow their victims into tiny bits. (Blomkamp is fond of splattering the camera lens with gore.) When Wikus encases himself in a gigantic suit of alien armour, you can’t help thinking of another, more simple-minded sci-fi flick. Lumbering about, he looks like a drunken member of the Transformers. Still, these weaknesses don’t diminish the originality of the film’s first half.

The best sci-fi has always mirrored the society in which it’s created, but recent big movies in the genre have had only perfunctory relevance. Think of the sketchy eco themes in the lame remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and the risible The Happening. District 9, in contrast, is a noble attempt to grapple with serious issues – refugees, mass immigration, prejudice – within the confines of a popcorn movie. If Blomkamp’s apartheid allegory isn’t exactly profound, it’s still more potent than what we’ve come to expect from this type of entertainment.

In the credits for the film, there isn’t a single name recognizable outside of South Africa, apart from the producer, and Blomkamp’s mentor, Peter Jackson. The director of the Lord of the Rings blockbusters, who also got his start doing gutsy low-budget pictures (Braindead, Heavenly Creatures), clearly recognizes Blomkamp’s promise. Despite Jackson’s imprimatur and the smart marketing, I suspect District 9 will remain a cool little cult film – but it’s the kind from which a big Hollywood career could grow.

District 9 opens Aug. 14.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.