Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2010

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When aliens finally arrive on Earth, they are neither planet-busting monsters nor cuties trying to phone home. They are not little or green and certainly not men (more resembling grumpy, two-meter lobsters). There are several thousand of them and they’re destitute and dying in a gargantuan spaceship stalled over Johannesburg. Our initial, humanitarian response is to bring them down and place them in the title resettlement area. But good intentions soon give way to xenophobia and greed, and the refuge becomes a concentration camp. When it’s decided to relocate these so-called “Prawns” to a more distant place, the job is given to a clueless bureaucrat (Sharlto Copley), who promptly inhales a virus or something and begins to transform into a human/alien hybrid. He makes a few new friends and gains a few new perspectives. The best sci-fi films use the genre’s flashy accoutrements to illustrate a greater truth, and this political allegory is clearly aimed at Apartheid and Nazism. It expertly mixes sharp social commentary with some diverting mayhem. If you find all this bleak and cynical, how do you think we would really react in such a situation? Look at history.