The Fourth Kind – Where no one should boldly go, ever
Heard of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Of course you have. The title of Spielberg’s alien classic refers to a system of classification developed in 1972 by J. Allen Hynek. The idea was explored in his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry. According to Mr. Hynek, once a person is within about 150 yards of a strange object or inexplicable light source, he or she qualifies for his system of classification.
Should you merely see a peculiar flying object, or some strange lights, then it is a close encounter of the first kind. The second kind would involve physical impressions left in the landscape or on the body of a viewer (perhaps a dent on a car, or a burn on someone’s arm). Hynek’s system ends with the third kind; an actual sighting of an entity or entities on board a UFO.
The Fourth Kind is not a sequel to Spielberg’s alien blockbuster, nor is it supported by J. Allen Hynek’s original list of ‘close encounters’. A close encounter of the fourth kind is generally defined by today’s ufologists as abduction, and so the premise of this film revolves around ‘actual archive footage’ of people talking about and experiencing such an encounter.
The movie begins with ‘real’ footage of Fourth Kind director Olatunde Osunsanmi interviewing gaunt psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler as she retells her terrifying story.
Zombie-killer and cosmetics enthusiast Milla Jovovich arrives to tell us that she will play Dr. Tyler for parts of the movie that do not contain the original archive footage.
We get some Abigail Tyler back story; she witnessed the murder of her husband, Will, but cannot remember the assailant’s face, she uses hypnotherapy to help the people of Nome attempt to understand their sleep deprivation and she has two children, one of which blames her for Will’s death. Much like her patients, Tyler is also treated with hypnotherapy as she tries to further understand the night of her husband’s murder.
A hypnotherapy session hosted by Tyler goes awry, with her patient vomiting and becoming deeply distressed after rambling about an owl. He appears to snap out of it, only to go home that night and hold his wife and children hostage with a gun. He tells police he wants to speak to Abigail and no one else, but upon her arrival he freaks out, rants in a strange language and proceeds to shoot his family dead. The original archive footage of Tyler’s patient gunning down his loved ones is then spliced into the movie. At this point we were left feeling that it would be very unusual for a film to get the rights to this kind of harrowing footage.
We bear witness to further strange occurrences caught on camera, which are amped up using Hollywood cash for the fleshed out re-enactments. Tyler becomes embroiled in this weirdness, whilst others around her either suffer serious injury or simply disappear. In the meantime, an untrusting and conservative sheriff (cliché, anyone?) thinks that everything is down to Dr. Tyler and her hypnotherapy techniques.
Instead of merging genuine footage with terrifying re-enactments, The Fourth Kind manages to merge genuine boredom with nullifying plot. A viral campaign akin to that of The Blair Witch Project has resulted in many believing the archive footage to be real, with the film merely acting as a padded version of actual events. Sadly this is not true, and anyone who fell for it should be ashamed.
The movie hinges on the footage; if it’s real then the events that unfold are horrifying, but if it is actually falsified nonsense then the film becomes a very weak episode of The X-Files (minus Mulder and Scully). There is no way that this kind of documented evidence of the physical effects of alien abduction could be quietly reserved for a film ten years down the line. The minute this footage entered the public domain, the world would have gone crazy. Instead, we are expected to believe that Mr. Osunsanmi had exclusive rights to all footage and used it to create a Hollywood movie and a generous payslip.
The Fourth Kind grates from the very start. Most of the archive footage is needlessly re-enacted, so we get a split screen showing the same thing twice. Why would we want to see the original interview with the ‘original’ Dr. Tyler, whilst simultaneously viewing it with better picture quality and Milla Jovovich reciting the exact same words at a slightly altered pace? We can find no logical answer to this, and so the frustration begins to snowball.
The plot is so thin it borders on anorexic, whilst the direction is extraordinarily crass and lazy. There are few positives to speak of, save for sheriff August. Although his character is recycled from other movies, and he does nothing of any interest, he is portrayed by dependable performer Will Patton (Armageddon, Gone in 60 Seconds), whose talents are wasted here. Some of the effects work well, and the acting in the archive footage is certainly realistic.
The ending is dull and unsatisfying; the whole experience must be similar to unwrapping an Easter egg only to find a mouldy potato. Close encounters of any kind with Osunsanmi’s cinematic fiasco should be avoided.
Image from Worst Previews
