The Fourth Kind

There's a couple of interesting things going on in The Fourth Kind -- it's trying to mess with our heads, suggesting that it's a fictional version of real-life events that offer evidence of alien abductions around Nome, Alaska a few years ago, combining dramatizations (featuring actress Milla Jovovich and actor Will Patton) with "documentary footage" of the videotapes and audio recordings that depict the startling, supernatural secrets of these (entirely phony) events. There's an intriguing idea here -- the split-screen contrast between the "real" interviews and the re-enactment, the contrast between real life and the Hollywood version, the straight-faced suggestion that Nome was plagued by creepy space aliens going in and out of people's houses as easily as Santa Claus and a lot more often -- but The Fourth Kind is so clumsy and clunky and stiff it's like watching someone attempt an intricate card trick while wearing oven mitts.

After a brief introduction where star Jovovich looks into the camera to introduce herself and explain the film's device and warn s that "some of what you're about to see ... is extremely disturbing," director Olatunde Osunsanmi interviews the "real" Dr. Abigail Tyler, who looks pale and shaken. We then see how Tyler, a psychiatrist, was trying to complete a sleep study she was doing alongside her recently-murdered husband; Abigail's husband was stabbed while they lay in bed, and the killer's yet to be found .. and all the participants in the sleep study, haunted by restless nights, tell of an owl who they've seen outside their window, or in their bedrooms, staring at them with implacable eyes ... that isn't an owl.

The Fourth Kind is trying to do something different, to be sure, but as anyone who's had a bad chef's special at a good restaurant, "different" doesn't mean "Well-executed." There's some good actors on-screen -- Elias Koteas plays Jovovich's peer and friend, while Will Patton is the surly sheriff who wants to know why the members of Abigail's sleep study have horrible things happen to them. It would be interesting if The Fourth Kind played with fact and fiction a little more, frankly -- the switching between the "dramatized" (fake-with-actors) and the "real" (fake-with-actors-we-don't-know) footage is a little haphazard, and while the "real" footage" is nicely designed (specifically, the Hollywood version of everything looks a lot neater, nicer and cleaner than the "real" footage), it doesn't feel like much thought went beyond the use of split-screen lines between "real" and "fake."

There's a couple of what my horror-loving friends call "jump-scares" in The Fourth Kind -- those moments when you're watching a scene and then OHMYGODSOMETHINGHAPPENS! -- but the tension in the film is deflated by a couple of logic holes no amount of psycho-babble can patch. When audiotapes of the nighttime weirdness capture an inhuman voice growling in Sumerian, it's a chance to give some "Chariots of the Gods"-style backstory, but then you think if some unseen agency were barking orders they wanted to be obeyed, wouldn't they do it in English? What, they have spaceships but not Rosetta Stone language-lesson CDs? There's also a big reveal of a big twist that falls apart the second you realize it hangs on the authorities taking at least two months to realize something they'd pick up on in five minutes.

The bigger question -- if The Fourth Kind is a clever bit of meta-fiction or a disingenuous attempt to prey on the gullibility of people with susceptible minds -- I leave to people smarter than I am. Plenty of films play the "real" card -- The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity -- and if they do it better, well, that's because they're better movies. The Fourth Kind tries to create a razor-thin margin between fact and fiction, but it still leaves holes in the movie big enough to drive a spaceship through, and some of the casting and directorial choices for the "real" people - -specifically, the poor make-up smeared soul playing the "real" Dr. Tyler -- actually undercuts the gimmick. With its clumsy and clunky attempt to make a chilling, thrilling tale out of the 'truth' behind alien abductions, The Fourth Kind feels third-rate.

Comments

[Livia]

OMG, I want to see this movie really bad, oh I hope I see this one in the theatre with all the other movies I want to see in the theatre. The Fourth Kind, I'm going to see wheather it's in the theatre or rent. I'll see it in a few weeks or wait for rent. LOL-I will be seeing this movie soon!

[Matthew S.]

The thing about the 4th Kind is they build up this hype, making you think it's real...but it isn't...What Paramount did to market Paranormal Activity, genius.

This movie, however, fell short to even my lowered expectations. I got goosebumps, sure, felt the urge to maybe creep out of my seat, but I didn't feel the dread and scares that Paranormal did.

I agree that the split screen thing got really annoying, and felt like it was an afterthought, not really a strong basis to add to the film's tone and message.