THE FOURTH KIND proves that a horror film doesn’t need splashy digital effects or pyrotechnics to be effective. On the contrary, to work, a film needs to establish a discombobulating sense of unease, the which happens here with a smartly low-key mood. Director and co-writer Olatunde Osunsame couples that with some very smart filmmaking techniques to bring into play something else, that most terrifying of sensations, utter powerlessness in the face of something relentless and unswayable. While the subject at hand is alien abductions, the title refers to the fourth level of interaction with alien visitors, it would work as effectively as a study of madness.
Director and co-writer Olatunde Osunsame uses some very smart filmmaking techniques to create a taut and growing sense of terror. The colors there in Nome, Alaska, are somber. The tone is quiet, with only truly blood-curdling screams punctuating the stillness at irregular intervals. Basing his story on actual abduction cases, his mis-step is to have star Mila Jovavich step out of character at the beginning of the film to introduce herself as herself and as psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler, the putatively real person she plays. In what could have been more tidily done with a screen crawl, such as the one that ends the film, she goes on to explain that what the audience will see is actual footage (where available) and dramatic recreations based on eyewitness testimony. There are facts and figures aplenty following. Millions upon millions of witnesses to UFOs flying through the sky (a selection of actual audio of witnesses plays over the closing credits), the peculiarly high number of unsolved murders and disappearances in Nome. The even more peculiarly high number of FBI visits there in comparison to Anchorage.
It’s the murders and disappearances that Osunsame focuses on. In particular, the gruesome stabbing death of Dr. Tyler’s husband, Will, as the two of them slept soundly in their bed after some tender connubials. Grief-stricken, Dr. Tyler vows to continue the couple’s work investigating the sleep disorders the locals are experiencing for a government report. There is an odd similarity to the stories. Each is awakened at around 3am by owls staring at them through the window. Strange white owls with very large eyes. Under hypnosis, one of them reacts violently to remembering that the owls, to quote from television’s Twin Peaks, are not what they seem.
The revelation has repercussions for everyone, including bringing the suspicions of the local sheriff (Will Patton) upon Dr. Tyler’s method and ethics, and the concerns of Dr. Tyler’s therapist (Elias Koteas) the one she’s seeing for grief counseling, that she is not handling things as well as she should.
Osunsame splits the screen often between “actual” footage and the recreations. It should be a hokey visual device, but is surprisingly effective, contrasting “real” people in the throes of terror and actors portraying the same emotion. Jovavich, pale eyes blazing, is determined and completely believable as a rock-solid woman opening up, rather than giving in, to the possibilities of an explanation that is outside accepted scientific data.
THE FOURTH KIND creates a growing sense of dread as aliens and ancient civilizations assert themselves into the debate of what exactly is happening to Dr. Tyler in particular and Nome in general. By deliberately showing only bits and pieces of the evidence, is leaves a tantalizing mystery hanging in the air, and leaves the audience to fill in the worst parts using the dark places in its own collective subconscious.
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