Most films based on factual events (and some that aren’t – see Fargo) are content with that old standby opening text (“this film is based on a true story”) that audiences have learned to instinctually distrust, and maybe some scrawl at the end about what happened to the characters since.
Not Olantunde Osunsanmi’s The Fourth Kind, which features the usual opening and closing bits but also assaults us throughout: every five minutes there’s “real” audio or “real” video and imposed text on the screen just to make sure we know the change in film stock means that what we are seeing is indeed, yes, “real”.
It’s all bullshit, of course, which you might confirm through a quick Google search when you get home from the cinema. Or not, because you’re not likely to be fooled during the course of the movie anyway.
This isn’t a film like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, where they might deceive us initially but at least keep the gimmick going for the course of the movie; this is a Milla Jovovich thriller that constantly interrupts itself, turns to the camera and lies to the audience (“hey, this is really real, remember?”) and then tries to continue.
It’d almost be offensive if it weren’t, ultimately, comical. Which is a shame, because there’s some stuff in The Fourth Kind that really works, and the central conceit could’ve been pulled off under different circumstances.
(Beware spoilers throughout the rest of the review.)
Milla Jovovich opens the film by speaking directly to a swirling camera: “Hello, I’m actress Milla Jovovich. What you’re about to see is real, and may be disturbing to some viewers.” Thanks, Milla, sounds good. Jovovich plays Dr. Abagail Tyler, a psychologist who lives in Nome, Alaska, with a son and daughter.
Her husband died under mysterious circumstances, and now Dr. Tyler (kind of) investigates mysterious disappearances around Nome, using some of her patients as a kind of bait. Will Patton plays the local sheriff who doesn’t like what Abigail is up to, Elias Koteas plays a friend/colleague, and Hakeem Kae-Kazim plays an expert she turns to.
Luckily for us, the real-life Dr. Tyler filmed the creepy sessions she recorded with her patients, which are played out for us next to (literally, via split screen) recreations starring the actors. I’m not sure why Osunsanmi chose to handle it this way, as the faux-real stuff is extremely well done and truly frightening at times, and puts the recreations to shame. Also effective: faux-real audio recordings of Dr. Tyler, who taped herself giving notes that turned into something else.
So what is The Fourth Kind all about? The title’s a dead giveaway, if you’re familiar with Speilberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Yes, this film uses the same scale devised by J. Allen Hynek, where the third kind refers to a UFO sighting, and the fourth kind refers to alien abduction. To give away any more would be unfair, the film is light enough on story as it is.
For all its disingenuousness, my immediate reaction to The Fourth Kind was one of intense dislike. But weeks later, some of it, and some of its scary vibes, still stay with me. That’s more than I can say for most films (including the overrated Paranormal Activity) and Osunsanmi does deserve some amount of credit for that.
Stick around for the end credits, which are quite possibly the creepiest part of the film, as they scroll over real-sounding audio reports of UFO sightings.
