'The Fourth Kind' abducts reality

November 9, 5:47 PMPhoenix UFO ExaminerLarry Lowe

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(Image: Universal Pictures)

Reader alert: This report on the movie 'The Fourth Kind' contains a spoiler. If you have not seen the movie and want to get properly scared at first exposure, stop reading now and come back after you have seen the film.

Some obligatory history, while you are deciding:

It was US Air Force Project Blue Book scientific consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek's classification system for UFO reports that spawned the term most closely associated with contact with an alien species.

The UFO reports of the 50's and 60's were all over the map, both geographically and contextually and some form of organization was needed. In his 1972 book 'The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry', Hynek devotes Part II to his taxonomy of UFO witness reports.

The simplest form of observation was bunched under the term 'Nocturnal Lights', which involved simply that: lights in the night sky that could not readily be identified by the observer as an airplane, star or other natural occurrence.

The next level of observation Hynek categorized as 'Daylight Discs', given the propensity of reports of the period to be of silver disk shaped objects of phenomenal performance.

The third level of observation was the most powerful of the observations, combined 'Radar-Visual Reports', where technology verified the observer's report.

From there, Hynek defined three categories of UFO observation:

Close Encounters of the First Kind is an observation of a unidentified flying object "in which no interaction of the UFO with the environment or the observers is reported."

A Close Encounter of the Second Kind, according to Hynek's system "leaves a visible record of its visit or encounter with human observers." Which might include a landing trace on the ground, interference with the local gravitational field or electromagnetic spectrum.

A Close Encounter of the Third Kind is one "in which the presence of animated creatures is reported. These creatures have been variously termed 'occupants', 'humanoids', 'UFOnauts' and even 'UFOsapiens'."

The concept of occupants was largely taboo in early UFO studies, which tended to focus on craft and performance. The idea that someone--or something--was in the observed craft was too demanding for many to contemplate and it is to Hynek's credit that he included the category. "To be frank," Hynek wrote, "I would gladly omit this part if I could without offense to scientific integrity." But there were too many reports of UFO occupants to simply dismiss.

• • •

It took the release of Steven Spielberg's landmark 1977 film to bring the concept of contact with non-human life to full awareness in the American psyche. To this day the motion picture 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' remains essentially a documentary of what was known, understood or could reasonably be implied about the phenomenon at the time.

Not much has changed since. The extent to which Spielberg got it right is remarkable. According to urban legend, when the film was screened at the White House, then President Reagan remarked to Spielberg something to the effect that few people, even among those in the room, knew how accurate the film was.

Regardless if that quote actually happened, the Spielberg film still stands as a reference point for understanding of the UFO phenomenon. It may not be pure documentary, but it has become the basis of truthful understanding of a phenomenon that science, politics, academia and the media still fail to take seriously or report fairly. (That is beginning to change. Check out James's Fox's latest effort, 'I Know What I Saw'.)

Which brings us to the subject of the article: a movie which addresses alien abduction. By the movie's definition, a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind is when the occupants of the UFO interact with the human observer, in some cases against their will and in other cases, without the observer's direct recall--what is known as Missing Time.

Steven Greer's CSETI group has further extended the taxonomy to include CE5, a Close Encounter of the Fifth Kind, that being a conscious contact experience initiated by the human observer and responded to by the UFO and its occupants.

• • •

Now for the spoiler:

'The Fourth Kind' is a complete work of fiction, despite the best efforts of Universal to position it as a film based on actual case history, utilizing actual video tape of events surrounding the case. It is apparent halfway through the film (or should be to a discerning audience) that the so-called archival film is actually production shot to match the needs of the script and utilized to lend credence to the experience which later unfolds inside the movie proper. It's not unlike Orson Welles' cutting back to the imaginary studio music program to sell the reality of the news reports during his radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

It was with crushing disappointment that my research discovered this is all made up out of whole cloth, including the real Abigail. The film wasn't even shot in Nome, but mostly in Bulgaria. And Dallas Massie, a retired state trooper who's the acting police chief in Nome, says he's heard nothing about aliens. — Roger Ebert

Characterized broadly as 'Blair Witch Project' meets 'Intruders', the film uses the device of a fictitious documentary film as the core of a glossy reenactment of an alleged abduction case in Alaska. Writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi did his homework and the details of the films match perfectly the accounts of alien abduction that ran in a cycle from the mid 80's to the late 90's--when the alien project apparently reached its conclusion and the abductions stopped. The smell of cinnamon is indeed reported during some encounters. The use of the big-eyed owl as 'screen' memory in experiencer's minds is very prevalent in the literature. And seriously, so are accounts of humans lifted up on beams of light right though windows, walls and ceilings.

The details match, that is, right up to a point where Spielberg stopped and Osunsanmi crosses the line, hoping to take the audience with him on a scary ride through a frightening landscape of Sumerian Gods, electronic voice phenomena, modern day demons and men driven mad by the visitors.

Before it goes over the line, the story is an accurate a portrayal of the abduction experience as detective story. 'Fire in the Sky', the Tracy Torme film of the Travis Walton incident was arguably more accurate in regards to the impact and reaction of the human world to the CE4 event, but the core of that film--the stereotypical alien abduction scenes onboard the ship--was pure studio fabrication. The 1984 TV movie 'Intruders', based on Budd Hopkin's book, is the most accurate small screen representation we have of this challenging chapter in UFO history. The film version of 'Communion' thus remains the only movie to be developed from the work of an actual experiencer of the phenomenon, Whitley Strieber. In that regard, it stands as close as we have to a documentary of the alien contact phenomenon known as abduction.

In traveling past the event horizon of documented reality, 'The Fourth Kind' fails the audience. Most notable among the false impressions are the Sumerian language spoken by the abductor entities (it's generally acknowledged that the abduction program was conducted by the Zeta Reticulan Grays, not Sumerian gods), the demonic possession aspects (lifted from other scare flicks and inserted into the story line), the addition of electronic voice phenomena (EVP) to the alleged recordings, certain physical aspects of the hypnotic regression (levitating in session and the broken bodies) and the murder-suicide of an abductee. No record exists of murder or suicide among abductees and no child has ever gone missing and not been returned. Had the director not included those excessive aspects in the story line, it could have been a valuable addition to the UFO film lexicon.

But he did and they have no business being in a film this good. The result is the introduction into popular consciousness of confabulated lore.

The film is intense and frightening as any good piece of scary entertainment should be. And that is the film's fundamental goal: to scare the popcorn right out of your bag.

Just remember: It's only a movie.

The really scary parts are fake.

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