So now, here comes “The Fourth Kind,” another one of those films “based on real
events.” And they have a far more entertaining idea. All those people who
disappeared forever? Or showed up the next morning, staggering about, forgetful
and disoriented?
Abducted by aliens. Um-hmm. You betcha. Big, Sumerian-speaking, bug-eyed aliens.
I’m sorry, but if this is the bus to Crazy Town, I think you just passed my
stop.
“The Fourth Kind” isn’t content, though, to simply exploit some real-life
tragedies to push a cheap movie. That would be too easy. So it pastes its
production together out of “archival footage,” “actual” audio tapes and other
bits of “evidence.”
It’s an old trick, of course. “The Blair Witch Project” was probably the first
to pull it (and like that movie, this one seems to have set up some fake
websites for the gullible). And recently “Paranormal Activity” made a fortune
out of purportedly real, home-movie videos.
Except “The Blair Witch Project” was smart enough to leave you room for doubt.
And “Paranormal Activity” was well-acted enough to make you believe. And both of
them drew you in far more expertly than this slap-dash shocker.
Brilliant psychotherapist Milla Jovovich — my favorite casting, I think, since
Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist in “The World Is Not Enough” — is
having a problem in Nome, you see. Every time she puts one of her patients under
hypnosis, he screams about owls, breaks her furniture, and vomits all over her
carpet.
Now, this is a good weird start (and not unlike another based-on-a-true-story
spookshow, “The Mothman Prophecies”) but “The Fourth Kind” pushes things too far
by incorporating all sorts of “actual” footage. Which is all so obviously faked
— and dull — that far from drawing us in, it just makes us roll our eyes. And
check our watches.
Jovovich cries a lot, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable reaction to
realizing you’ve just set up your upscale therapy practice in Nome, Alaska. Good
ol’ actor Will Patton chews the scenery like a wad of Skoal. The monsters are
never shown, which is annoying, and the wooden director appears as himself,
which is even more annoying.
But then, of course, he’s not supposed to be acting; he’s supposed to be
interviewing the actual participants. Because this is all real, remember? As the
movie repeatedly insists, it’s only presenting this information; it’s up to you
to decide what to believe.
Well, I believe this was a waste of about an hour and a half.
If you’re still interested, Kyle Hopkins, a reporter with the Anchorage Daily
News, wrote about this subject recently at the site adn.com; he pointed out that
not only did the movie seem to invent this “real” psychiatrist, it also gave
Nome a mountain range it doesn’t have.
It’s a nice piece, but I have to say, Hopkins’ work aside, “The Fourth Kind” has
convinced me. There must be intelligent life on other planets.
Because, to paraphrase those great cosmic scientists Monty Python, there
certainly isn’t any here on Earth.
