The Fourth Kind (2009)

The Fourth Kind uses “actual” footage to tell the frightening story of a woman who senses a mysterious, otherworldly force around and eventually within her, and who investigates this phenomenon with the aid of a close male friend and a video camera. Wait…didn’t I already review this movie a couple of weeks ago? No, that was Paranormal Activity, a simpler and much more effective horror film than this stylized but weak sibling.

Not that The Fourth Kind doesn’t try its level best to establish its scares as factual — starting with an introduction by actress Milla Jovovich herself, who tells us she will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler in a dramatization of events in Nome, Alaska. Further, she informs us the film’s director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, has footage of an interview he conducted with the “real” Abigail Tyler, along with audio and video recordings of some of the actual events. In this interview, Tyler appears frail and deeply troubled, with a weepy-eyed expression and cracking voice, and her recounting forms the narrative backbone of the film, bridged into the dramatization by frequent use of split-screen.

Dr. Tyler is a psychologist in Nome, continuing a study initiated by her deceased husband, Will. The circumstances surrounding his death are shrouded in mystery, and set up for a dramatic revelation later in the film. His absence has profoundly affected their two children: sullen pre-teen son Ronnie, who criticizes his mother for ignoring her family’s psychological issues while devoting her time to the problems of others; and younger daughter Ashley, who seems to have become physically blind as an empathetic reaction to her father’s death.

The Tylers were curious about the high incidence of unexplained disappearances among the population of Nome, and Abigail soon discovers another strange commonality — a number of her patients are having trouble sleeping, each being disturbed around 3:30 in the morning by the appearance of a white owl outside their windows. When Abbey puts one of her patients under hypnosis to recall what happened during the night, he goes into a wild, lamp-smashing freakout, shown to us side-by-side with footage of the “real” patient’s outburst. Calming down before leaving Tyler’s office, he goes completely off the rails later that night, demanding to speak to Tyler before killing his whole family and then himself.

This incident raises the ire of the local disbelieving sheriff (Will Patton), who thinks Abigail’s hypnosis was the cause of the murderous rampage. But she receives emotional support from a wary colleague from Anchorage (Elias Koteas), who operates the video camera for another disturbing hypnosis session. Then a creepy discovery brings the terror to Abbey’s doorstep, as she falls asleep with her dictation recorder on and winds up capturing the sounds of her bedroom door opening, followed by her terrified screams and a growling voice speaking an unintelligible language. This speech is later identified as ancient Sumerian by a scholar (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) whose number she finds in one of her late husband’s books.

The scholar drops in a heavy dose of the ancient astronaut theory, much like those espoused (and later debunked) in Erich Von Däniken’s book Chariots Of The Gods? — and that’s one symptom of why this movie ultimately fails to pass muster with me. Throughout the film, we’re barraged with reminders that Jovovich and company are dramatizing a true story: the caption “actual voice” appears on screen frequently, the scariest moments are depicted in heavily distorted faux-real video, and a few random factoids are tossed in but fail to prove anything — for example, a high incidence of FBI visits to Nome compared to Anchorage. The film is so overeager to proclaim this simulacrum as “truth” that it raises the hackles of suspicion and actually ends up working against it. When we’re shown a split-screen of a real person and a dramatization by an actor speaking and moving simultaneously, the visual comparison merely makes the “real” person seem like just another actor, but on grainier video footage.

Even if you want to turn off your bullshit detector and watch this movie just for the thrills, you’ll be sorely disappointed. There are a couple of brief scares, including one you’ll see coming long before it happens, but they’re depicted in heavily distorted video with screaming and static on the audio. These effects offer no real payoff for the audience on either the dramatic or thrill level, and the entire process becomes an exercise in frustration. The movie also goes overboard with the excessive musical score, gorgeous-yet-superfluous aerial footage of Bulgaria (yep, that’s where they filmed this), and the split-screen stuff, including a bit where four images unnecessarily slide around the screen, reminding me of the credits to The Brady Bunch.

Coming so close on the heels of Paranormal Activity, this movie is a gift for students and English teachers who need a subject for their next compare-and-contrast lesson. There are many ways one could examine that topic, but for me, one angle stands out: The Fourth Kind practically begs the audience to believe its proclamations of reality and ignore the slickness of its production, while Paranormal Activity keeps its production simple and relatable. The Fourth Kind has a bigger budget, but its thrills are much cheaper.

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