The Fourth Kind

When I first saw this trailer, I was so geeked out for it. It looked crazy scary and had such a good gimmick! Sometimes a good gimmick can get you far and I was sold on this bad for, for sure. Then Paranormal Activity happened. Paranormal Activity had such a strong gimmick, amazing buzz and when it came down to it, it delivered. All of a sudden horror movies were going to have to work a little bit harder to win me over because one actually creeped me out. In that regard, The Fourth Kind just stopped looking like something I needed to see and became something I might see. However, on opening night a friend wanted to go and this friend is someone who gets into horror movies, which always makes them so much more fun, so it was on.

It is hard to fully explain what is going on here, but essentially, we are meant to believe this movie is based in fact. The director and screenwriter have gone out of their way to recreate "real" footage first, and then give us actors "acting" out those scenes and often the two kinds of footage are put side by side for effect. The movie is about alien abductions in Nome, Alaska. People go missing all of the time, and a Shrink, Abby Tyler, is carrying on her dead husband's practice, trying to help the people of Nome who are having trouble sleeping. She puts these people under hypnosis and while they are under, these people re-experience these horrifying nightmares. What starts as them seeing an owl, turns into something coming into their room and scaring them so bad that when they go home after the hypnosis, they get violent and one even kills himself and his family. Abby is trying to figure out what is going on and she eventually decides that maybe, just maybe, these people are being abducted. Then, some weird shit starts happening to her and her little girl goes missing. Everyone thinks Abby is crazy because after her husband was killed, she kind of lost her marbles, but she strongly believes what is happening in alien.

As far as gimmicks go, The Fourth Kind is a mixed bag. Often times the "real" footage enhances the action, but there are moments when it takes away from the action as well. using the "real" voices in the "fake" action gets far too annoying and the acting from the "real" footage is just not terribly convincing. I understand the idea is to scare you with something that actually happened because it is perceived to be scarier, but I think the makers go a bit overboard. The "interview" with the "real" Abby is interesting in moments, but I feel like everyone is working far too hard to convince me it was real. Reality should not take that much effort to create. It is a tricky line to walk because there are moments when it really does help create this sense of reality, so maybe they just needed someone better to edit the footage or put the footage together.

Of course, a horror movie is mostly about one thing: scaring you. And, The Fourth Kind does accomplish a fair amount of scares. There are three just wonderful scenes of horror that get the blood flowing. The first begins with just a voice, a deep, African demonic sounding voice and then from there, the scene goes into full blown horror, with Abby in her room trying to piece together what happened after she fell asleep one night. It is a frightening scene with great camera work, wonderful lights and some great scary sounds. The movie is a firm believer that the things we do not see are scarier than the things we can see, so we never get a glimpse at the aliens. It makes it scarier, honestly. The next great scene involves an almost possession of a body by an alien. It again shows us nearly nothing, but provides some great jumps, a super creepy voice and more great camera work, lighting and sounds. However, it all pales in comparison to the big climax. Abby decides she needs to go back under hypnosis, so her Shrink friends puts her under and she tries to find her daughter and tries to remember what happens and shit hits the fan. The movie goes scary, with the whole screen shaking, the demon voice proclaiming it is God and then bam, we see Abby in a ship getting something about to be drilled into the back of her head and it raises the hair on your neck.

The Fourth Kind is not going to fool anyone, I don't think. Nothing about it really seems real, and any sort of investigating on the Internet will show that it is not based in fact at all. It is a slow moving movie with some bad acting and writing, but in those three scenes, it does provide enough scares to consider it a semi success. I love that we never really see what is going on. In fact, there are entire sequences where we see nothing but white noise and it is mostly effective every time it happens. I think the problem is the movie too heavily relies on the same tricks over and over again, without altering the results. The movie has this massive jump 5 minutes in with something piercing the chest of a guy who is sleeping and from there, there is no slow build. It is just this constant barrage of sounds and "jump" moments. If Paranormal Activity taught me anything it is that a slow burn is the best way to get people in the mood to jump for real.

Final Grade: C