“A THRILLER OF THE BEST KIND”
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, and Elias Koteas
Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality.
Genre: Thriller
Release date: November 2009
By John Delia
Believe it or not, The Fourth Kind, a true story is more freaky than Paranormal. Director Osunsanni takes true video footage of an incident that took place in Alaska, couples it with some good acting by Jovovich, Patton and Koteas to create a gripping tale that’s creepy. If you like science fiction that challenges your mind then this film should fill the void.
1n 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, its called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, its the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document…until now.
The film takes place in a remote region of Alaska where Psycologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (featuring both the real person and Jovovich) started videotaping sessions with patients that have been seeing owls at their window. Over a few days, the patients began to get hypertensive, described weird happenings, levitated and attempted suicide. Tyler hypnotized the patients to see if they could tell her what happened to them and recorded what she believed to be an abduction. Since there were others from the same town coming forth with similar stories, she became concerned that her patients were telling the truth.
After a couple of suicides and a murder of a family, the police tried to implicate Tyler and discredit her story about alien abductions. When Tyler herself gets contacted by aliens, an unexplainable video puts the police in a precarious position.
I know the story is very hard to believe as we have all been brought up seeing movies like Close Encounters of a Third Kind, Alien, Alien vs. Predator, E.T. and well you know all those fun films that I love to watch. But, here there is documentation from a credible source and with actual video to boot.
You have to ask however if the video tapes have been tampered with, embellished, cut for effect or are they movie making special effects much like Paranormal used to scare an audience? I choose to believe that since there were several people in the town affected by the same abductions, that this is probably, although embellished, REAL.
Osunsanmi does a masterful job of scaring the crap out of an audience with his split screen archival footage and the good acting by a stellar cast. Playing out the six day event from the perspective that the audience becomes witnesses to the true tale, he interjects his version of what happened in the small town just a few years ago.
The Fourth Kind is rated PG-13 for violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality, all necessary to the plot.
FINAL ANALYSIS: Only the viewer can choose what to believe in this thriller. (4 of 5 Palm Trees)