District 9

In an alternate 1982, a massive alien mothership stalls over Johannesburg, South Africa. The starving, malnourished aliens inside are extracted and confined to a slum beneath the ship — District 9. Twenty-eight years later, conditions have rotted into squalor and unrest, and Multinational United (MNU), a private weapons contractor, is hired to forcibly relocate the 1.8 million 'prawns' to a tent city further from the human population.

Bumbling MNU bureaucrat Wikus van de Merwe, recently promoted by his father-in-law, leads the door-to-door eviction. While searching the shack of a more intelligent prawn called Christopher Johnson, Wikus is sprayed in the face by a mysterious black fluid Christopher has been distilling for twenty years. By that night his fingernails are falling off and his arm is transforming into a chitinous prawn limb.

At an MNU lab, his superiors discover his hybrid DNA can biometrically fire alien weapons — a holy grail for the company. They prepare to vivisect him. Wikus escapes, becomes the most wanted man in the country, and is broadcast on every screen as a bioweapon-leaking pariah. He flees to the only place no one will look for him: District 9 itself.

He tracks down Christopher and learns the truth. The black fluid is starship fuel. Christopher needs it to power a small command shuttle hidden beneath his shack and reach the dormant mothership above. With it, Christopher promises he can reverse Wikus's transformation. They strike a deal.

Together they raid MNU headquarters to retrieve the canister and rescue Christopher's young son, who has been keeping contact with the mothership through alien tech. They escape, but Wikus's transformation is accelerating and Christopher reveals the round trip will take three years. Wikus snaps and tries to leave alone. Nigerian gangsters who want to eat his prawn parts for mystical power intercept him; MNU mercenaries, led by the brutal Koobus, close in.

Wikus reaches Christopher in time. Christopher is captured by Koobus while trying to board the shuttle. Wikus, fully committed now, climbs into a stolen alien mech and fights through the Nigerians and MNU forces to free him. The shuttle launches, ascends to the mothership, and the ship awakens and slowly lifts away from Earth. Wikus is left behind, surrounded — but a swarm of prawns falls on Koobus and tears him apart.