Fourth Kind (2009)

The Fourth Kind 

Rating: 2 & 1/2 Stars Out of 5

Note: this does NOT contain any spoilers beyond general expository information (like that which you might read on the back of the box, or see in a trailer).

Overview: Effectively creepy at times, but by and large a glitzy Hollywood take on the found footage genre that forgoes much of what makes the style so chilling. It tries a little too hard, and in doing so falls short.

Other than perhaps Jurassic Park when I was five years old, it's hard to imagine a movie I was more anxious for than 2009's Fourth Kind. Aliens have always scared me more than anything, particularly abduction scenarios and the stoic, bone-chilling "greys." Every year has its share of psycho slashers and ghostial hauntings, but I'm always on the lookout for horror movies featuring aliens. Imagine my supreme joy to find that not only was a grey-themed abduction film coming out, it's found footage!

While ghosts tend to dominate, alien abduction has its own tradition within the found footage genre, including its original paranormal incarnation Alien Abduction (The McPherson Tape) and its remake Incident In Lake County, as well as 2003's The Wicksboro Incident.

Fourth Kind is a slick, spooky film about a small town in Alaska where an unprecedentedly large section of the tiny community is being plagued by sleeplessness, incited by the feeling of being watched over by a mysterious owl, which under hypnosis reveals to be something much more sinister. It's a psychological ride. At its best it provides creeping chills and even presents a compelling narrative about the line between self-delusion and how to interpret extraordinary real life events, depending on how you choose to interpret it.

Unfortunately for Fourth Kind, it came out a month after the wide release of Paranormal Activity. That's the found footage equivalent of The Beatles opening for The Turtles. Without Paranormal Activity, it's possible Fourth Kind would have scared the everloving shit out of me. But following such a masterpiece, a severely less well-done film was hard to swallow.

While most good found footage films play up the "this really happened" angle, Fourth Kind takes a rather ham-fisted approach, positing an untimid opening monologue declaring the events to be real, and perplexingly interjecting supposed "real footage" of the events alongside hollwyood recreations (I suppose they wanted to pay twice the number of actors they conceivably needed). Everything about this film is, of course, wholly fictional, in case you were wondering.

Some films convince you they could be real through a strict attention to realism and plausibility.... and then there's Fourth Kind, which shows you preposterous events but has the gall to look you straight in the eye and tell you it's fact. Not the most nuanced approach, to be sure. But it can be scary, in the sense that it's so bold as to almost elicit a "they're hamming it up so much, it has to be real or they'd need to be idiots" reaction. It's an admirable tactic, and I don't blame them for trying.

Occasionally the "real footage" moments are creepy. Yet it would have been more compelling had the whole film been done this way. As is, the scenes of "real" footage tend to be used sparingly and often to little effect. Moments where it's used to decent effect are juxtaposed against moments where it seems to be nothing better than a gimmick. Although a unique touch, the film would have been better without it.

Overall, Fourth Kind provides some serious skin-crawling moments, and excellent thrills. But I'm not a thriller guy. It's splendid as a thriller, but as a descendant of The Blair Witch -- which it is, in the way that it openly purports to contain genuine footage of a real paranormal event -- it falls very thin. And hey, if you don't expect me to lavish praise on shoestring budgets and speak cautiously of big productions, you're reading the wrong blog. I'd recommend this movie to fans of Fire In the Sky, but not Incident In Lake County.