Like any red blooded male, I enjoy a good horror film. A horror flick that brings the chills and offers up a good story is a big plus. Horror films that incorporate laughs can also work as we’ve seen with “Drag Me to Hell” this year. The one thing that can kill horror films is pretentiousness. When directors try to be too clever for their own good, it usually ends in utter failure. “The Fourth Kind” is one such film. Every move it makes is a complete misstep and the audience pays for it with an hour and a half missing from their lives.
Ever since “The Blair Witch Project” scored big revenues, other horror films have tried to go the pseudo documentary route to varying degrees of success. “Paranormal Activity” just did it with great results last month. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi presents “The Fourth Kind” as fact based about some strange things going on in Nome, Alaska. Star Milla Jovovich starts the movie with a public service announcement. She states that the movie is based on real case studies and some of the names have been changed.
The case studies were reportedly done by a Dr. Abbey Tyler. Jovovich plays Tyler, while the movie also presents the “real” Dr. Tyler in interviews and videotaped sessions. The problem is that Dr. Tyler really doesn’t exist. It is all a pointless exercise to dupe the gullible into seeing this worthless film. Osunsanmi constantly flashes on the screen that we are seeing the real Dr. Tyler or the real sessions going on. It becomes a joke how many times he tells the audience who is on the screen. He even goes so far to state the actors’ names and the part they are playing. Most of them are an alias or so they say.Another annoying aspect of the film is the “real” footage being shown and then the movie footage taking over. This stops all the momentum “The Fourth Kind” tries to sustain. It is a bit hokey and played out the thousandth time they do it. Osunsanmi even goes to a split screen to show the fake real footage and the movie footage. He takes it up a notch further by splitting the split screens some more. It is a futile attempt to be clever, daring and visionary with the shots.
Tyler was conducting sleep studies with her husband when he tragically dies. Was it murder, suicide or some other unexplained reason why he died? By the time the film ends, you will not care. This death causes heartache and pain for the rest of the family. Tyler’s daughter goes blind because of this occurrence and her son resents her. It is all one big happy family.
Meanwhile, she continues the sleep studies. The patients say they are haunted by a white owl. This owl can get in their room and turn into something more sinister. All of this stuff is mostly kept off screen. They wouldn’t want to scare anyone with this material, would they? Tyler uses hypnosis in her sessions. After one tragic event, Tyler
continues on with her studies like nothing had happened. The sheriff (Will Patton) comes snooping and doesn’t like what she is doing. It is all rather comical how he does police work.
Tyler consults with some colleagues to see what is going on. More strange dealings occur. People screech at high decibel levels. It is certainly advisable to wear ear plugs to this film. The tormented Gnome folk also speak in a long dead language that was around long before Jesus walked the Earth.
It looks like aliens are the culprits for all these shenanigans. I wish the aliens would have stolen the movie footage and spared the people of Earth from watching this drivel.
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