I’m not saying that District 9 is a sci-fi classic, but if any sci-fi film released in the last few years deserves to eventually be known as such, then it’s pretty darn close. Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp takes his excellent short film, “Alive in Joburg” and expands upon it with a lot of skill and minimalist (for modern Hollywood sci-fi) effect. In true Twilight Zone fashion, the real monsters of District 9 aren’t the shell-fish-looking, bug-like aliens that arrive in an inoperable spaceship over the skies of Johannesburg, but the feckless corporation that forces them into slums, and keeps them there with armed guards and top-of-the-line security where they live off garbage and are taken advantage of by ruthless Nigerian gangs.

The film is shot from two different perspectives. There’s the standard third-person omnipresent, where the camera is everyone and no one. But at the beginning and end of the film appear to be some kind of documentary made after the events depicted in the film. The documentary segments are also intercut throughout the film along with security camera footage and other film from different vantage points “on scene.” Mostly though after the first half hour, much of the documentary-style is dropped and the story is presented straightforward. Still, Blomkamp’s technique immediately sets the tone of District 9 apart, and that tone is very matter of fact. There’s no evil doers (with exception), or doomsday device, or saving the planet at the last minute, but a very down-to-earth story that’s very rich in parable.

There are also no names in this movie save for the man who’s Academy Award winning John Hancock goes about the title, Peter Jackson. Using unknowns adds to the documentary feel and lends the story a further degree of authenticity; there’s a reason that 2001 starring Keir Dullea is a classic and 2010 starring Roy Scheider and John Lithgow is not. The main character of District 9 is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a middle-manager at Multi-National United (MNU) which is responsible for the administration of the aliens, nicknamed ‘prawns’ by the people, and not in the good way. Van De Merwe is promoted by his father-in-law to supervise the forced eviction of the aliens from their slums in District 9, to a new facility established outside of Johannesburg, where security can be better assured. And that’s where things get interesting.

Setting the film in South Africa, home to a more earthbound form of segregation barely 20 years ago, is a smart move on the part of the filmmakers. More than that, District 9 can be taken as a powerful allegory for immigration issues in North America and Europe with the MNU being a sort of government sanctioned Minute Men complete with a personal military and the infrastructure of a small country. The other half of it, of course, is exploitation. Would a powerful corporation like MNU take on the responsibility of shepherding 2 million aliens without some kind of substantive recompense? Unlikely.

These broader implications, and their discussion, would be moot if the main story weren’t compelling. Van De Merwe finds himself the unfortunate ill-timed victim of one alien’s plan to get him, his child and their people off Earth and back to their own world, the side effect of which is that he’s able to control alien devices. This is important because after over 20 years of trying by human scientists, the only thing they known about the alien’s technology – but especially their weapons – is that only the aliens themselves can work them. Van De Merwe finds himself the most important human on the planet and the key to a new arms race, which unfortunately exposes him to MNU’s mad scientist side operation where aliens have been tortured and dissected to learn their genetic secrets.

It certainly marks a stark change in the way Van De Merwe sees his former employer. Imagine one’s father-in-law standing over him strapped to a hospital bed saying that he’ll his daughter the right cover story to hide the fact her husband was dissected and harvested against his will while living. From the almost gleeful tone Van De Merwe accepts his new assignment to “help the prawns for the better,” to being on the run from the Repo Man, you could almost compare Van De Merwe to the millions of Germans who didn’t know people were being slaughtered wholesale in their own backyard during World War II. Though Van De Merwe intention is a quid pro quo with the alien not-so-affectionately called Christopher Johnson, helping him escape Earth for the cure to his condition, that surely changes by the end to a more basic and ironic struggle for human rights.

There’s no secret revelation, no third act twist, no grand flag planting moment where the good guys win with the utter defeat of terrible evil. No, that’s too easy. The door however is left wide open for a return visit to the mistreated aliens of what’s at the end called District 10. Blomkamp, in his first feature, shows the steady hand of a professional confident in his vision and in his ability to get the audience to invest emotion into cockroach-looking aliens and a mid-level government drone that bears a passing resemblance to Schneider from One Day at a Time. Like a lot of the best sci-fi, District 9 isn’t about flashy special effects, but about powerful storytelling with real world resonance. Although I think the image of a flying disc hovering gently over Johannesburg is about as close to iconic imagery you can get.