Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Here's the thing, if the idea of seeing actual footage of alien abductees going under hypnosis to remember being taken--a process that results in wild convulsions that literally breaks bones in their body--appeals to you, you're in for a hell of a ride with THE FOURTH KIND. I consider myself a person who would absolutely be excited at the prospect at seeing such footage, and this film certainly sets up the idea that we are about to see such material as we examine the life of Dr. Abigail Tyler (played at times by Milla Jovovich), a psychologist living in Nome, Alaska, who treats enough patients with the same visions of late-night visitors to realize that something more is going on than just sleep deprivation. The film establishes itself as a mixture of real footage of some of these sessions (most of which involve hypnosis to unlock these buried memories) and recreations from Jovovich, Elias Koteas as a colleague, and Will Patton as the disbelieving local sheriff.

If this footage is genuine, this might be one of the most incredible movies I've ever seen. If the taped interviews with Tyler are genuine and her story is true, it would be almost impossible for me to even wrap my head around what's being presented in THE FOURTH KIND. You don't have to dig very deep to find the countless articles and conspiracy theories who believe that Nome is some sort of epicenter for alien visitors, with the highest number of missing persons in all of Alaska, and FBI investigations that have brought a disproportionate number of agents to Nome since the 1960s. So even if this story is 100 percent fiction (and I'm not saying it is or isn't), writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi has done a compelling job setting up a backstory (or maybe it's more of a cover story) to at least entertain the idea that this footage is the real deal. Here's the problem: everything about this movie screams "Fake!" The interviews with the woman we're told is the real Dr. Tyler made me feel like I was watching an actress--a good one--reciting lines. The fact that whenever something truly messed up happens on videotape, the tape becomes distorted and we only catch just enough of a glimpse of some truly horrific stuff is a bit unnerving, but feels phony beyond words.

Maybe the problem I had with the film is that it pushed so hard to be taken seriously that I felt like I was being sold a fiction. It's the classic oversell, and all I could do was push back and look for the signs I was being manipulated. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the footage is real for the simple fact that it feels bogus. I didn't really have issues with the performances. Jovovich is, for the most part, fairly convincing as the stressed-to-the-point-of-snapping Tyler, who believes her husband was murdered in bed next to her. He was also investigating these unexplained phenomena and may have gotten too close for comfort. I like the idea that hypnotizing these people to unlock memories unleashes some sort of message from whoever took them, and that doing so causes the subject to become unhinged. There are ideas here that are good; the fault with THE FOURTH KIND is in the execution, and it's a flaw that pretty much torpedoed the movie for me right from the start.

Let me review this film from a different perspective. I always insist on seeing any brand of scare film with an audience, and I'm guessing that the majority of the audience members at THE FOURTH KIND with me bought that they were seeing a film blending real footage with re-enactments. Again, I'm not saying that this film isn't exactly that, but it felt false at every note to me. The crowd was getting their asses scared clean off--not quite at PARANORMAL ACTIVITY levels of fear but this was a close second. So maybe your enjoyment of THE FOURTH KIND depends on a combination of gullibility, willingness to buy into a premise that is structured in the least convincing way possible, and an overwhelming desire to want to believe that aliens visit Nome with alarming frequency. If that sounds like you, enjoy this film with all your heart and soul. The rest of you can sleep in or go to bed early; you have better things to do with your life.

-- Capone
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