The Fourth Kind

Alien abductions? Mental illness? Coincidence? Scam? The Fourth Kind is the coolest, most chilling movie I’ve seen in ages. It combines session video tape and police recordings, inter-spliced with dramatized footage with actors, to tell the story of Abigail Tyler, a psychologist, who discovered a common link between her patients who were all being treated for sleep disorders. All these patients made reference to a white owl that was watching them outside of their window. When Dr. Tyler hypnotizes one of them, he becomes so unnerved and terrified that he literally jumps out of his seat in fright. Seeing the session video tape side by side with the Hollywood reenactment creates an eerie sense of anticipation and fascination as the details of the mystery unfold.

Milla Jovovich represents Dr. Tyler in the film and she recreates all the scenes that were not captured in videotape or on the other voice recordings. Sometimes we have footage from an interview revealing the real Dr. Tyler and at other times we have Milla Jovovich playing the part. The scenes are edited in a way where we go from video to reenactment and sometimes both at the same time. It is a very effective mode of story telling that causes you to pay attention and question your belief system the entire time.

When leaving the theatre, many of the kids were laughing and joking around that the videotape was fake, and that the doctor did not exist. But even if that were true, it doesn’t matter. This is a really entertaining film. The video tape may of been faked like the Blair Witch project, but even if it was, the facts remain. The FBI have been to Nome, Alaska a disproportionate amount of times and Nome’s record for disappearances is well above the national average. Something is going on in Alaska, why not alien abduction? At least the film makers had the courtesy of giving us a polished Hollywood reenactment instead of the shaky hand-held camera work of other similar films. I spent most of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield staring at my shoes instead of the screen trying not to loose my cookies. At least this film I could watch.

Whether or not you believe in aliens is a question that you must decide. This film only lays out the facts and statistics and asks you to make up your own mind. Like one of those TV mystery shows we are asked to look at the evidence and then ponder the possibility, and like Agent Mulder, I want to believe. This film is very cool.

Rating: First Run I want to believe