Zef is like dirt, it’s like scum, there was no zef movement before we came along. Their bloody, violent, inventively psycho music videos draw on a vocabulary of “zef,” which Ninja explains to DAZED in their Spring 2015 issue, “We made it into a fucking movement. T.,” “Pinocchio,” “RoboCop,” “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” and of course, Frankenstein’s monster, among many others, slosh cheekily through the holes in the story.) But Blomkamp (“District 9”) embeds his movie-ostensibly about corporate robot cops taking over crime control in a slightly futuristic Johannesburg- in the music, art and attitude of his fellow South Africans, Ninja (aka Watkin Tudor-Jones) and Yo-landi Visser (aka Anri du Toit), playing exaggerated versions of their personas in Die Antwoord. (Along with some very suggestive sentiments about the mind-body divide.) The throughline is a kid’s movie-like journey, that of a sentient robot-slash-infant with five days to learn how to live before dying. (The film’s pre-opening Wednesday-night screenings for critics across the country were followed by a wave of harsh, obstinate commentary on Twitter that meant to kill.) Many of the scenes, plus a wanton vocabulary of variations on “muthafuckah” and “Jesus Christ,” are more purposeful provocation rather than an internationally legible pop fable.

Or, Punk as fuck, or maybe “Zef as fuck.” Co-writer-director Neill Blomkamp’s third Johannesburg-set feature is not the robot movie anyone watching the coming attractions might have expected.

Die antwoord videos bloody