The trailer for 'The Fourth Kind', upon first viewing looked genuinely intriguing. And the film is, in places. On reflection though, it does seem like a long, drawn out version of said trailer.
Where the film tries to be clever by using Jovovich and director Olatunde Osunsanmi as themselves in scenes deliberately shot in an attempt to heighten realism, it falls flat on it's face. For starters, we all know that what we are watching is fictional, so why waste the screen time on pointless close-ups of the star and the director attempting to drive their obviously forged point home? Not only does Osunsanmi wrap up the film with more than a few minutes of his vain scare tactics, but he also spends about a third of the film (on screen!) self indulgently 'interviewing' the 'real' Abigail Tyler (the character Milla Jovovich portrays, but you know that already seeing as she, the actress, informs the world of this fact in the theatrical trailer as well as the first scene of the film) on what is set up to look like a university sound stage. Now, the actress playing the 'real' Abigail Tyler isn't too shabby. Visually strange enough, she manages to use her voice to decent effect. She looks and sounds like someone who is genuinely disturbed. It is Osunsanmi's acting however, which not only lets down these all too frequent scenes, it is so frustratingly pitiful that it ruins the entire film and should fail to convince even the most gullible of cinema goers.
Do you ever watch films and find yourself leaning over to the person next to you, and shaking your head, saying 'This is stupid. That would never happen.'? The fact that I found myself doing just this during a film about alien abduction is worrying. At one point during the film, Tyler (Jovovich's Tyler) is Sheriff August's (a disappointing Will Patton) prime suspect regarding the recent deaths and disappearances in Nome, Alaska. He suspects her so much so that he places her under house arrest, and places a surveilling officer outside her property 24/7. Cue some strange goings on, as our 'police footage' attempts to capture. At one point we are shown the POV of the mounted dashboard camera. The officer exits the vehicle and begins to rant loudly about 'something hovering over the house' and someone from within the house being 'taken' (OMG!). The camera distorts so we don't see much, but we can tell from the dialogue that yes, there is a flying saucer hovering over the Tyler house and that yes, a tractor beam is shooting down and abducting a family member before his very eyes! This much is evident. Obviously Sheriff Will Patton is round in a flash to question a distraught Tyler, whose daughter is missing (shock!).
Being the skeptic he is, the idea that there was any sort of paranormal involvement in the sudden disappearance is dismissed immediately, and despite the fact that she is visibly terrified for her daughter's safety, he proceeds to accuse her of a) being a mentalist, and b) hiding her daughter from the police. Even when she pleads with him to question the surveilling officer who he placed outside the house and who could probably testify to at least some of what she is saying, he persists with his inquisition. Not only that, he (for some reason that is lost on me) refuses to question the officer, and instead removes her only remaining child (an extremely annoying and unreasonable little boy) from her custody!
Yeah, you read me right. In the wake of the potential abduction (alien or otherwise) of a young girl, instead of hearing out the mother and questioning the officer on the scene at the time of the alleged abduction, a senior local government official decides to go ahead and take her other child too (you know, just to even things up), leaving her writhing on the floor, completely heartbroken. It was at this point in the film that I leant over to the person next to me (it's okay, they were a friend), shook my head and commented that 'this is stupid' and that 'that would never happen'.
Between the terrible acting and subsequent plotholes, there are actually some fairly harrowing scenes. Funnily enough, they all feature the 'archive footage' used in the TV spots to sell the film, but that's hardly suprising. A family is shot up using '24'-esque four-way splitscreen, and two of the hypnosis scenes (primarily the one featuring Tyler herself) will stick with you for a few days after seeing 'The Fourth Kind' (if you make it that far). The use of distorted images leaves a lot to be imagined, so you are left with a terrifying Sumerian soundtrack which sounds like a dinosaur shitting a Michael Bay Decepticon and is far beyond eerie. These scenes are upsetting enough to make you want to tell your friends about them, but when coupled with the poorly scripted story make for a film that is ultimately forgettable. 'Paranormal Activity' couldn't seem more prospectful after watching this tragedy.
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