When the trailer for THE FOURTH KIND debuted, it wanted to be very BLAIR WITCH-y with its premise. This is all real and if you Google it you’ll find the answers. I haven’t done much in the way of Googling all this alien abduction stuff but it seems that for every site that would support this things in this movie, there’s another that debunks it. I’m not gonna get into a debate on all those things here (at least not now) but a JoBlo.com reader was lucky enough to catch an early screening of THE FOURTH KIND and wrote in a review. He keeps it mostly spoiler free and what little spoilers there are are noted as such. Take a read…
I recently caught a screening of “The Fourth Kind” starring Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist living in Nome, Alaska. The film is stated to be based on facts that occurred during October 2000, and has real, never-before-seen footage of interviews with her patient sessions. All of her patient’s claim to be seeing and doing the same thing: waking in the middle of the night to a white owl perched outside their window. As Dr. Tyler investigates further, she believes that it may be the work of alien abduction, thus the title “The Fourth Kind”, which is a series of different encounters with non-human occurrences. The First Kind being sighting of a UFO, Second Kind being observation of a UFO, Third Kind being encounter, and the Fourth being abduction. That’s basically all I can tell you without giving away any major spoilers, and I will notify you before revealing anything that might spoil the story.
This film has been stated to be a true story of accounts, but I have tried looking for any sort of link to it, but have not found anything yet. Anyways, even if this is a fabrication, it is a truly SCARY film. Probably the scariest I have ever seen. The tension is very, VERY high during the scenes of actual footage and film adaptation. There are many scenes during the archive footage of (**POSSIBLE SPOILER**) possible demonic possession, abduction, and murder-suicide (**END SPOILER**).
Milla Jovovich does a very good and believable job as Dr. Tyler, but its nothing Oscar-worthy. She is supported by a some good performances from Elias Kotas and Will Patton, yet Will does get a little never-believes-you-till-the-end type of guy, but still does it well. The photography is pretty well done by Olatunde Osunsanmi, protege of Joe Carnahan (who produces), for his debut film. Whether or not this was a true story, they did a good job of covering it up. What makes me believe it is true is that some big name stars have put their careers on the line saying that it is true.
All in all, this film was VERY, VERY SCARY. The archive footage will be very disturbing, I must warn you. So to recap: good performances, some pretty scary stuff, and good direction. This film gets an 8.5/10 for me, 9.5/10 if you’re into films like Blair Witch Project (has same type of archive film style) and Fire in the Sky.