Since Close Encounters of the Third Kind, films about alien contact have been popular with viewers. However, some have found The Fourth Kind disappointing because no aliens are actually seen in the film.
A Synopsis of The Fourth Kind
In Nome, Alaska, people have been mysteriously disappearing during the last four decades. Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, a hypnotherapist who has a collection of tapes of patients who, under hypnosis, claim they were abducted by aliens. These people also reported first being watched by what they thought to be an owl. Tyler believes there is a vital link between the archived tapes of her patients and the disappearances.
Categories of Alien Contact
The film derives its name from an established set of categories of alien contact.
- 1st Kind - Sighting
- 2nd Kind - Evidence
- 3rd Kind – Contact
- 4th Kind - Abduction
The people in this film are believed to have been abducted
The Film’s Production and Style
The Fourth Kind was written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and is his first major film. The Fourth Kind is documentary in style, a type of presentation that has recently become very popular with film directors. The film goes to great lengths to maintain a sense of realism.
The film consists of a series of split scenes. These scenes are divided between those of Tyler with her face blocked out and the actress playing her in the film. Much of film consists of "actual footage" of the archived hypnotherapy sessions Tyler allegedly recorded. The entire film consists of charcters telling what they saw and experienced. No aliens are actually seen and no abduction is witnessed by the viewer.
How much of The Fourth Kind is True?
The documentary style of this film leaves watchers wondering how much is true and how much has been contrived to generate film interest. While it appears the story is loosely based on the suspicious number of disappearances and deaths occurring in Nome, Alaska between 1960 and 2004, this mystery has never been solved. In 2005, the FBI was called in to investigate. The 2006 conclusion was that “excessive alcohol consumption" and "harsh winter climate” were to blame.
As for Abigail Tyler, there is no real record of her except for a web page that gives scant information and is believed by many to be a marketing ploy similar to The Blair Witch Project marketing campaign. The Fourth Kind claims to be based on “actual case studies”, but no documented evidence of the cases presented in the film have been found.
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