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A close encounter of The Fourth Kind
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If you read the critic's reviews about The Fourth Kind they aren't positive. What failed with the movie was its guerilla marketing campaign, not so much the movie itself. Actually, it’s a scary, disturbing fun little film about alien abduction.
The premise of The Fourth Kind revolves around the idea that it is a documentary reenactment of actual missing person case files in Nome, Alaska. The end result is that they are explained by alien abductions. The movie is named after J. Allen Hyneks classification of alien encounters, the fourth kind being abducted.
To help with the suspension of disbelief, Milla Jovovich even goes so far to announce that she is playing the role of a true person, Dr. Abigail Tyler. She states that there will be reenactments with her in them alongside real footage of Tyler and her case. With foreboding she ends her opening with an explanation that some of the raw footage is disturbing.
Parts of the intro are cut into the theatrical trailer which is intriguing enough to make you want to Google the actual Dr. Abigail Tyler and the "true case studies" that the movie is based from. However, anyone with any sort of research viability will hit a dead end. There are articles about Nome, Alaska and its slew of unfortunate deaths and missing person cases, but they are mostly solved. The harsh landscape of Nome coupled with a high rate of alcoholism can be attributed to the high rate of people disappearing or being found dead. There's nothing supernatural about that.
When you Google "Dr. Abigail Tyler" and "Alaska" only articles and bad reviews about the movie come up. Once upon a time there was an Alaskan psychology site with a bio about Tyler but it is long gone. Bloggers and forum threads of viewers who had seen the site said it didn't hold any believability. Perhaps that's why it was taken down.
This is where the movie went wrong. The reason Blair Witch Project was so believable had little to do with the movie's shaky camera work and ludicrous acting. It's because it had a flawless marketing campaign. The Sy Fy Channel (then the Sci Fi Channel) even had a documentary on the history of the Blair Witch with interviews from friends and family members of the missing film students. The website for Blair Witch was impeccable. The fine line between reality and fiction had been blurred so much that it was hard to tell if the movie was a fake (people on YouTube still question its realness). That's what made it disturbing.
The campaign for The Fourth Kind had so many holes in it that anyone with half a brain cell could figure out it wasn't real. Overall, that shouldn’t matter if the movie delivers.
Failed marketing campaigns aside, The Fourth Kind, is a solid alien abduction movie. If you know anything about actual cases of alien abductions there is enough truth interwoven in the story to overlook some of the movie's bigger flaws. Mostly, the "real" footage seems contrived and it's hard to suspend disbelief when the lighting is perfect and everyone is in frame. Even so, some of the "real" footage is disturbing. It is all too reminiscent of true tape recordings from hypnotherapy sessions of real life people who have claimed to be abducted. There's a chilling response to watching or listening to someone afraid in and in pain whether it is staged or not. Guaranteed, no matter if you don't believe in alien abductions, there are some frightening scenes in the movie. You would have to be dead in order not to react.
So, if you are going to the movies to have a good time and get scared go watch The Fourth Kind. It's worth the matinee price at least. If you are looking for something more based in reality then skip it and listen to the Betty and Barney Hill hypnotherapy tapes on YouTube. Either way get the pot of coffee ready because you are probably not going to want to sleep...
Theatrical Trailer for The Fourth Kind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVRHOhLP-aA
Check out the Blair Witch Project Documentary: The Curse of the Blair Witch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVXEsYLKdxc
Heather's website: www.heatherwoodward.net
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