The Fourth Kind (2009)

Film review #705

Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi

SYNOPSIS: A rural town in Alaska is plagued by a series of strange events. Abbey’s husband is murdered, and Abbey suspects that an alien abduction was involved, and as other such cases start happening in the town, Abbey tries to uncover the truth before more people are affected…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The Fourth Kind is a 2009 science-fiction psychological thriller. The opening, introduced by Milia Jovovich, who plays the protagonist Abbey, but here is out-of-character. She tells how the events of the film are based on a true story, included archival footage of “actual events” and caution should be advised, and an open mind required to experience the events. This is, in actuality, all a lie: even the archival footage and the “real events” are made up for the purposes of this film. It’s honestly a bit strange to present the story this way, and while I think it could work, here the story is nowhere near as compelling or convincing as it needs to be. The “found footage” stuff is presented convincingly, but once you know it’s fake, it falls apart quickly (although you probably would not know that unless you looked the film up). It’s quite possible, however, you will feel cheated if you know that the real events are false, and you’re essentially being deceived.

Abbey is a psychologist who believes her husband was murdered by aliens attempting to abduct him. As other strange events happen in town, Abbey believes they are also connected to her Husband’s murder. Her investigation throws out some oddities, but I didn’t that anything interesting really was uncovered: everything was a bit too ambiguous. When the film starts throwing in Ancient Sumerian writings as well is where it really lost me: there’s just too many loose ends to really pull anything out of the movie. If you really buy into the marketing around this movie and the idea of the found footage, you could perhaps find something in this. Also, there is a sense of ambition and potential in the setup, but outside of that, The Fourth Kind doesn’t give quite enough behind it’s marketing hype.