In the UK, THE FOURTH KIND was released just weeks before PARANORMAL ACTIVITY – and, like that movie, represents an inevitable 21st century post-BLAIR WITCH faux-reality take on a sub-genre that’s already full of conventionally shot movies purporting to be based on true events. THE FOURTH KIND, which may well have found a more lucrative niche in the X FILES-instigated UFO boom of the 90’s, follows “reality”-based sci-fi thrillers like FIRE IN THE SKY and the work of Whitley Strieber, notably COMMUNION. The technique, however, revolves around prominent use of hoaxed archival interviews and “found footage” in a manner that’s now typical of this cycle.
THE FOURTH KIND is a tad more audacious than some of its peers. It risks veering into unintentional humor from the very start when it brings on Milla Jovovich to introduce herself as the “actress Milla Jovovich” and remind us that she is playing a real (fake) figure named Dr Abigail Tyler, genuine footage of whom will be interspersed with reconstructions featuring the actress Milla Jovovich. Writer / director Olatunde Osunsanmi also appears on-screen as himself, in interviews with the real (fake) Dr Tyler and addressing the camera directly alongside the actress Milla Jovovich. For the first few minutes you become a little alarmed that we’re watching a redux of a hokey old Strange-But-True type paranormal show with Dan Aykroyd.
That notwithstanding, the movie develops into a surprisingly successful and genuinely eerie take on the creepy-alien-abduction scenario. Jovovich leads an earnest, credible cast as the aforementioned Dr Tyler, a psychologist who will become a high profile victim of the eponymous form of alien encounter – actual abduction by extra-terrestrial beings. Leading up to this event – during which her young daughter is also taken, never to be returned – Dr Tyler is drawn into the strange goings on in the infamous town of Nome, Alaska when her husband is apparently stabbed to death by other-worldly beings in the marital bed. She learns of many local disappearances and strange accounts of alien encounters by otherwise unconnected residents, each of whom also saw a peculiar owl before their bizarre experience. Sheriff Will Patton (excellent as always) gets impatient and Jovovich’s friend and colleague Elias Koteas (ditto) provides steady support.
If you accept this movie for what it is and buy into the po-faced presentation of the subject matter – as well as the initially off-putting, intermittent decision to depict “real” footage alongside re-enactment via split screen – there are bonafide chills to be had. Like with many movies in the cycle of found footage genre movies, the format itself prevents the kind of intrusive special effects and overt horrors that would have destroyed credibility and neutered the impact generated here by the “less is more” approach. This movie builds a potent sense of creeping dread and finds a lot of fear from unfamiliar, incoherent voices, ambiguous blurred imagery and disembodied screams on crackly audiotape. And while we’re not fooled that this Dr Abigail Tyler really did exist, the footage of this haggard, haunted looking woman really does convey the sense of a person who has gone to Hell and back.
There’s a definite hokiness about the framing device of the actress Milla Jovovich telling us simpleton viewers, at least twice, that we can make up our own mind about what to believe. And her initial on-screen warning that what we’re about to see is extremely disturbing, is like a sensationalistic come-on from a 70’s video-nasty. But THE FOURTH KIND – which has a chilly ambience closer to THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES than the sillier COMMUNION – is otherwise an involving and effective movie. And the score by Atli Orvarsson is evocative, often hauntingly beautiful.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
