DVD: District 9 (15), Neill Blomkamp (DVD/Blu-ray, 112 mins)

In 1982 a spaceship full of aliens – unaffectionately referred to as "prawns" – are stranded above Johannesburg. Nearly 30 years later and 1.8 million of these unfortunate visitors have been segregated in a militarised slum called District 9; subsisting on cat food and exploited for their superior technology by the malevolent munitions company Multi-National United.

Blomkamp's savage and gross sci-fi/political satire, produced by Peter Jackson, centres on hapless Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a petty bureaucrat who has been asked by the MNU to supervise a military charge into District 9. While there he ingests a substance that turns our unlikely "hero" into a "prawn". District 9 is a smart and unsettling monster B-movie, where the monsters are all human.