In the opening scene of “The Fourth Kind,” viewers are warned by Milla Jovovich’s character, “some of the images you are about to see are extremely disturbing.” Unfortunately, they are disturbing for all of the wrong reasons. “The Fourth Kind” is a complete mess of a film: poorly written, poorly acted, poorly shot and, frankly, insulting to the audience.
The plot revolves around Dr. Abbey Tyler (Jovovich), a therapist working in the small town of Nome, Alaska. Her husband was murdered some time ago as the result of unexplained events, and no killer has been identified. One week she realizes that all of her patients are complaining about a common issue: waking up at the same time every night with a white owl staring at them. She decides to put one of her patients under hypnosis to determine the problem, only to have the patient go mad in her office. Eventually it becomes clear that the cause of the problem is close encounters of the fourth kind (alien abduction), and Abbey herself becomes the aliens’ target. The movie presents scenes of “actual” abduction footage, including an interview with the real Dr. Tyler.
As soon as abduction works its way into the plot, all of the film’s wheels start falling off. Dr. Tyler’s colleague, Abel Campos (Elias Koteas), does not believe in alien abduction and laughs at anyone who suggests it. Unfortunately, the last laugh is on Campos for his terrible acting. One of the only strong personalities on screen, Sheriff August (Will Patton), is also one of the most unintentionally funny characters in recent movie history. When Dr. Tyler is distraught and crying, the Sheriff’s only response is to yell, throw objects across the room and arrest people without charges. These scenes were probably intended to be some of the more dramatic moments of the film, but they end up being laughable.
“The Fourth Kind” is funnier than the average Hollywood comedy, which is about the only praise it deserves (besides acknowledging its beautiful aerial shots of the Alaskan landscape). As the movie saunters toward its conclusion, some of the decisions made by the characters are so ridiculous that one wonders how any of these people received advanced degrees in psychology.
The twist at the end is frankly uninteresting, and nothing gets resolved. There are so many potential connections and plot devices introduced and never addressed that the audience gets the impression that the filmmakers had no idea where the story was going.
Marketing for the film has focused on the fact that “The Fourth Kind” is based on actual events videotaped by the real Dr. Tyler during sessions with her patients. The film uses this original footage to prove its point. This concept is intriguing, as any “actual” footage of an alien abduction should theoretically be pretty impressive. That intrigue grows until about 20 minutes into the movie — when actual footage is used and the whole facade starts to crumble. In some scenes, the “actual” footage of the patients is shown side-by-side with the actor portraying the character, simulating the footage in a split-screen format. What the audience sees is two people side-by-side doing the same exact scene at the same exact time. Not only does this eliminate any suspense that might have existed, it distracts viewers and takes away from the story.
Even with some questionable filmmaking decisions, “The Fourth Kind” could have been forgiven had some of the real footage of abductions been shocking, convincing or even scary. But they’re not. In one scene, a patient starts levitating over his bed; immediately the footage turns to static and nothing is visible. Is the audience supposed to believe that the aliens purposely tampered with the camera or brought powerful electromagnets with them for the abduction? At that point it became obvious that the supposedly “authentic” footage is nothing more than an elaborately planned and terribly executed hoax on the part of the movie studio.
If the filmmakers thought they had an important story to tell, more effort should have gone into preventing the end result: a boring, insulting film that provides more laughs than scares. Viewers will probably find themselves hoping that the footage in the film is real, if only for the slight chance that they might be abducted from their seats and not have to watch the rest of this film.
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