THE FOURTH KIND
GRADE: C
Just weeks after the release of the terrifying “Paranormal Activity” comes “The Fourth Kind,” a sci-fi thriller with a large budget, claiming to have real footage of alien encounters.
The film opens with Milla Jovovich introducing herself as the actor who will be portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychiatrist from Nome, Alaska. Jovovich warns the audience that what they are about to see is a reenactment of actual events and that the footage may be disturbing. With this setup, the audience is excited to explore the world of alien activity, but the viewer certainly leaves unsatisfied.
Over the past few decades, a disproportionate number of the Nome populace has been reported missing. The FBI has visited the town of Nome over 2,000 times and has still found nothing. In an interview with director Olatunde Osunsanmi, the real Abigail Tyler attributes these disappearances to encounters of the fourth kind. Tyler is a gaunt, fragile-looking woman who was either genuinely affected by trauma or just generously cast as the stunning Jovovich. As she painfully pronounces each word, she explains that an encounter of the first kind is the sighting of a UFO. The second kind is evidence of alien activity, like crop circles. In the third kind, aliens make contact. An encounter of the fourth kind is abduction.
After her husband’s death, Dr. Tyler continues his sleep study and finds that several of her patients exhibit the same symptoms. Patients report being awoken at 3 a.m. to find a white owl watching them from outside their window. After the owl somehow found its way into their bedrooms, they have no memory of what followed. Dr. Tyler’s hypnosis sessions with the Nome residents are split-screened with the reenactments by Jovovich and the other actors.
Most of the “real” sessions show the subjects flailing and breaking furniture in Tyler’s office, describing a horrible smell of “putrid cinnamon.” While some of these scenes do draw laughter from the audience, a few images cause immediate silence. During the hypnosis of one of the patients, the audience catches a glimpse of a man levitating off a bed before the camera blurs. Viewers later find out that he was left paralyzed.
Tyler herself claims to have been attacked in her sleep and an actual audio recording tries to prove it. After conveniently falling asleep with her tape recorder on, Tyler screams as she is thrashed about her room. In the reenactment, shadows enter Jovovich’s bedroom and drag her out. Thankfully, there are no bug-eyed men in green suits boarding a space ship reminiscent of “Plan 9 from Outer Space” in the film, but the audience does catch a glimpse of Jovovich surrounded by lights and machinery as something drills into her shoulder.
On the tape, over Taylor’s screams, a nonhuman voice recites ancient Sumerian. A language expert equates the language with ancient Sumerian sculptures of “rockets shaped like Apollo” and men wearing headpieces that resemble oxygen masks. The idea that aliens have been contacting this planet for centuries is never really developed, and the comparison of ancient art to Hollywood’s idea of space is insulting.
At one point, the screen flashes frightening police footage of a dark, circular figure hovering over the Tyler house. However, as soon as the audience is able to realize what it is, the tape cuts out. When this mysterious force again attacks her family, Tyler undergoes hypnosis in an attempt to make contact. Like her patients, Tyler is tossed about, and the aliens threaten her in their so-called Sumerian language. It is hard to accept this as real, since the tapes become static whenever an alien force is present.
The only shocking moments come from the actual footage before it is cut short. Otherwise, the Sumerian-speaking, cinnamon-scented aliens of the fourth kind ultimately rouse laughter from the audience.
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
