Review for The Fourth Kind

The Fourth Kind (PG-13)

Release Date: November 6th
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars


“The Fourth Kind” is a thriller involving alien abductions, split-screens with the “reenactment” by the actors and the “real” footage, the occasional make-you-jump-in-your-seat scares, and at the end will leave the audience thinking, “Is it real?”

The movie begins with actress Milla Jovovich standing in a gloomy forest claiming that the film you are about to see is based on true events that can be supported by 65 hours of archived footage. The movie switches back and forth between the actors and the alleged documentary footage, sometimes via split-screen. Jovovich plays the part of Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist whose own mental health is questionable due to her husband’s murder by unknown forces. She, of course, thinks she is in the right state of mind to be helping patients of Nome, Alaska with their issues involving sleeplessness and the vision of an owl staring at them through their window. Through the use of hypnosis, the patients visit their blocked memories of mysterious entities coming into their bedrooms at night, an act that eventually leads to their insanity.

The film accomplishes two things: the first is scaring the pants off those who believe in alien abduction theories and more importantly, those who believe that the footage they see in the movie is real. The second is making curious people go online and google the words “alien abductions in Nome, Alaska” and “Dr. Abigail Tyler,” only to come up short in information minus the viral marketing ploy of the movie company involving websites that support the story, but were not even created before 2009.

The actors did their job well despite the fact that the audience is constantly reminded that they are doing just that—acting. Due to the style the movie is played out, with the split-screen footage, it is hard to take the actors seriously, let alone pay attention to them at all.

So the most important question everyone is wondering: Is the footage in “The Fourth Kind” real? My guess is probably not. However, you have to admit that one of the best ways to reel in audiences is to create a story based on happenings that will never be answered and tell them that it’s true. Movies such as this one prey on the gullible. The supposed “real” footage did involve something I had never seen or heard of before when it comes to alien abduction stories—alien possession. Since when do aliens possess the bodies of humans and speak through them in…Sumerian? Although the images were a bit frightening, it pretty much lost all credibility when the footage included levitating humans supposedly being possessed by aliens. The movie might have been more believable if it had been about demonic possession instead of alien abductions. The footage was definitely useful in providing sufficient amount of horror, though. Without it, the movie would have been extremely dull. In my opinion, one of the scariest parts was looking at the bug-eyed face of the “real” Dr. Abigail Tyler. Throw in the image of her eyes popping out of her head and her jaw opening so wide that it appears broken while speaking Sumerian in an alien voice—that was a horror movie within itself.

Whether the movie is a hoax or not, it is definitely interesting and entertaining. You might actually have to humor the idea that it can be real to get the full effect, though. You may be walking out of the theatre thinking, “Wow, that was total bull,” or maybe even the opposite. Either way if you find yourself going home and googling information on the events then you know the movie has accomplished at least one thing for you—curiosity.

Trailer is below: