District 9

Blomkamp built a science-fiction film out of South Africa's own history: a million extraterrestrial refugees confined to a militarized slum, and a petty company man overseeing their forced relocation who is exposed to their biology and begins, horrifyingly, to change. Shot in a mockumentary style that grounds the spectacle in something queasily real, it works as both a propulsive action film and a blunt apartheid allegory. The transformation at its center is body horror with a moral engine. It is angry, inventive, and far smarter than its explosions suggest.