Timing is everything. If “The Fourth Kind” had come out before Halloween, then somebody besides the aliens who live among us and their human thralls might have gone to see it. Instead, it will simply go down in the annals of UFO movies as a “nice try,” along the lines of “The Blair Witch Project” or “Paranormal Activity.”
Lead actress, Milla Jovovich (“A Perfect Getaway,” 2009) introduces herself, the part she will be playing (Dr. Abigail Tyler) and the movie, warning the audience that some of the footage they are about to see is “extremely” disturbing.
Jovovich also says that everything in the film is based on actual facts, footage, evidence, etc. The audience is then introduced to the real Abigail Tyler. Sadly enough, the woman’s appearance is a huge contributing factor as to why this movie is scary.
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, the action takes place in desolate Nome, Alaska. The first scene, supported by “actual” evidence takes place on Oct 1, 2000. Dr. Tyler is being hypnotized in order to see the face of the man who killed her husband; she is unable to see the face and has a shrieking attack in the psychiatrist’s office.
She then goes to work; her mission is to complete her husband’s sleep disorder study. This is where things get interesting. While the movie provides the audience some scary scenes, enough to increase one’s heartbeat and make them cover their mouths in order to prevent themselves from screaming too loudly in the theater, the scenes with the patients are the most exciting.
Viewers are presented with the first of eerie scenes where a number of her patients describe the same waking-up in the middle of the night, only to look over and see a white owl perched somewhere in their room, just looking at them. When asked if they had left the window open, they answer, “no,” creepy.
One of Dr. Tyler’s patients undergoes hypnosis themselves and you witness a full-blown image of chaos. This scene uses “actual” footage next to the footage filmed for the movie. The screaming is terrifying and you finally feel like the movie is getting good.
Every time you get this feeling throughout the movie, it is interrupted by an interview between the real Abigail Tyler and the director of the movie Osunsanmi. The film would have been a lot better off had the interviews been left out, it is easy to understand someone’s desire to try something new but this attempt failed and the interviews should have come with the DVD as a special bonus, or something.
Just when you thought this movie could, maybe be believable, the story takes a few twists that leave the audience with the inability to turn back anymore. Abigail Tyler is crazy, so is the director and this movie is horrible.
The “actual footage” is usually damaged in some form, and toward the end Dr. Tyler’s sanity is completely in question when it becomes clear that something she had thought was real turns out to have been a hallucination.
If you didn’t get enough thrills from this past Halloween, then go see this film. If you believe in alien abduction theories and want something in support of your beliefs then go see this film. If you want to see a good movie, go see something else.
