There are four kinds of alien encounters. THE FOURTH KIND is abduction.
Written: Nov 06 '09 (Updated Nov 07 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful, creepy and scary. Brilliant pacing, plot and timing create a great horror flick.
Cons: Split screen stuff is a little irritating. Claims it is factual don't hold up.
The Bottom Line: A great "Documentary" in the line of The Blair Witch Project. Great fun, so what if it isn't real? It will make you jump.
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| talyseon's Full Review: The Fourth Kind |
The Fourth Kind (2009) Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi.
"It's not really an owl...."
On a scale of alien encounters, Close Encounters of the First Kind is seeing a UFO. (I have. I think it was a swarm of insects moving through an electric field. Weird, though.) The Second Kind is evidence; Crop Circles, radiation, scorch marks. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we all know, is contact. And the Fourth Kind, that indicates abduction.
This movie takes great pains to assure you that it is all based on real events. Mila Jovovich comes out, and explains that all of what you see has been drawn from actual case studies, and archive footage. And then they start the movie. And they go through the movie, often splitting the screen between Mila and company and the actual archive footage. A strange dichotomy, not quite perfectly synced up, shows the Hollywood version, rich, colourful, with beautiful people, and the real tapes, grainy, washed out, normal to homely folk. It is quite compelling.
And the story is fascinating. Abbey Emily Tyler is a psychologist; her husband and she were working on a report about sleep disorders, until her husband's murder two months ago. Now, Abbey is trying to finish the report, and raise her children. Her son is withdrawn; her daughter is suffering from hysterical blindness. It is not a good period in her life.
But sometimes, a disturbance in a therapist's life allows them to pick up on something they have overlooked, and Abbey finds that many of her patients tell the same story about seeing an owl watching them. As she chases this imagery to its root, she uses hypnosis, with startling results.
Not only are they not owls, but they inspire terror in her patients, the kind of terror that elicits blind, self destructive panic. Suddenly, Abbey is not longer the healer, but a suspect in a growing body of disturbing cases. Abbey is supported by fellow therapist Abel Campos (Elias Koteas) and opposed by Sherriff August (Will Paton). Paton's performance adds something, an almost pleasure in confronting Abbey. While he seems angry or sympathetic, there is a substratum where you think he is enjoying bullying her. It adds a great deal to the show, very subtly.
The terror escalates as the closer to the truth they get, the more pervasive the problem proves to be, and the more dire the consequences of their investigations.
This is a beautiful movie. It captures the damp cool majesty of the far north. The recreations are if anything far too pretty in comparison to the file footage. And it is gripping. The drama carries you along, keeping you right on the edge of your seat.
And so when they pull out all the stops to scare you, you jump. And you jump hard. It is surprisingly effective with minimal gore or special effects. Pacing and timing and atmosphere do most of the work, and the actors put it over the top. It is an extraordinarily well done movie; scary and entertaining.
And it is all based on real events.
Ummm, not so fast. While they work very hard to make it look like a documentary, I have some real problems with this scenario. First, they say the names are changed to protect people; fine. But if Abigail Tyler appears on camera; one, shouldn't she get mentioned in the credits? And two, if they changed her name, why did they not tell us about it? They were scrupulous with everyone else, but no effort was made to hide her identity. Abigail Tyler was never licensed to practice in Alaska.
Second, as an employee or the Mental Health System, I can guarantee you file footage of sessions was not turned over to movie makers. Nor do I think it would be easy or legal to obtain the police records either. But the case files...sorry; I call bullsh! . It is a fun, scary movie, but that is all it is. Not a documentary.
This review is Lean-N-Mean, weighing in at exactly 666 words.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Scary Movie
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
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talyseon
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