Posts Tagged ‘The Fourth Kind’

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C/O Paul Bradford
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Tucson, AZ 85734

INCLUDED IN THIS ISSUE:

Investigator Spotlights
–Paul Bradford Joins the Ghost Hunters International Cast
–Colleen Quinn-Beltramini Investigates With NESPI

Special Reports
–Will We All Die in 2012?
–High-Tech Oracle? The Web Bot Project and 2012
–2009 Paranormal Year in Review

Haunted Sites
–The Charlesgate Hotel

Haunted History
–Memento Mori: Photographing the Dead

Are We Alone?
–Why Don’t They Believe Us?

Quantum Musings
–2012: Will Neutrinos Be the End of Us?

Personal Experiences
–Diary From a Haunted Hotel
–Tales From the Road: Return to the Old Wheeler Inn
–What Was That? Inside the Live Ghost Adventures Special

Fiction: Featured Author
–“The Turn of a Friendly Card” by Richard Tingle

Paranormal Fantasy Author Spotlight
–Denise A. Agnew

Also
–TV Watch: Ghost Hunters Academy
–Reviews of the Month: 2012 and The Fourth Kind
–Member Profile: David Galvan (PLA)
–Calendar of Events
–Ghost Hunter comic

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INCLUDED IN THIS ISSUE:

Investigator Spotlight
–WPRS Strives to Better Understand the Paranormal

Special Report
–So, You Want to Be a Ghost Hunter, Eh?

Haunted Sites
–Paiute Imp

Haunted History
–Fear and Loathing in Salem, Mass.

Cryptids & Mythological Creatures
–Fairies: Myths & Legends

Are We Alone?
–The Green Fireball UFOs in New Mexico

Fiction: Featured Author
–“Rewind” by Ann Smathers

Paranormal Fantasy Author Spotlight
–Megan Hart

Personal Experiences
–Diary From a Haunted Hotel
–Ghost Hunter Case Files: A Haunting in Hopkinton: The Mcneil Home
–Ghost Investigation: Kentucky Farmhouse

Also
–TV Watch: FlashForward
–Review of the Month: Paranormal Activity
–Member Profile: Rick E. Hale
–Calendar of Events
–Ghost Hunter comic

by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground Magazine

Q: When is a “true story” not a true story?
A: When Hollywood tells you it is.

It’s shocking really – how blatant the lie is. The movie opens with actress Milla Janovich walking right up to the screen as herself and telling you that all of the archival footage you are about to see is true. Isn’t the number one rule of acting to never break character? And yet, in this bizarre beginning to a movie, Janovich does it at the very start – and then again at the end.

What follows is wholly unbelievable – and often annoying – “archival” footage interspersed with dramatizations about a sleep study gone awry. What the movie would have you believe is that Dr. Abigail Tyler is real. What the performance of the uncredited actress who plays the “real” Abigail Tyler would tell you is that if she is, they should have hired a better uncredited actress to play her.

A little about the story. Dr. Abby Tyler is struggling to hold it together after the apparent murder of her husband in a brutal stabbing death that Tyler herself witnesses. The two live in Nome, Alaska with their two children, and are conducting a sleep study for an unspecified government organization when Will Tyler is murdered. Determined to continue with their joint research, Tyler soldiers on, placing patients under hypnosis to discover why they report seeing an owl in association with their lack of sleep. As she probes further, Tyler comes to believe that what all of her patients have in common is alien abduction.

I could explain more, but I don’t want to spoil the fun for those who are interested in going to see this train wreck of a movie. I’ll admit it – I was intrigued and hoping to be at least a little scared. I wasn’t. Well not totally true – I jumped once.

Perhaps it was the blatant lie at the beginning, followed by “real archival footage” that was so bad it was obviously patently false that set me off of my game from the start. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d had a kidney stone the night before and just wasn’t feeling well. Maybe I was cranky. But the fact remains – I really wanted to like this movie. I love fictional stories. I don’t expect them to be true. Once a story claims to be true and then the lie has been exposed, however, I tend to not have a lot of respect for the finished product. It’s why I never read James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. Because he claimed it was true and it turned out he fabricated it. It actually might have been a pretty good novel (I have no idea if it was – but I heard good things) – so why not just present it as such?

That’s the same way I feel about The Fourth Kind. The story in and of itself is actually pretty interesting. It has an ending that certainly leaves you open to speculating about what really happened. If only they hadn’t claimed it was all true and filmed it “documentary style” with alternating “archival footage” and dramatizations. I can’t get past that single, off-putting fact.

We’ve come to the part of the movie review where I drag my soap box and jump on it with my bullhorn. No wonder so many people believe that those interested in paranormal topics like alien abduction, ghosts and conspiracies are nut jobs. Because there are so many out there presenting a paranormal story as “truth” when it so obviously isn’t. That always helps further genuine research and open-mindedness.

How do I know it isn’t true? Here’s a great article in the Anchorage Daily News looking into the veracity of the claims made by The Fourth Kind. But even without this – and many similar articles, it’s quite obvious. One only has to watch the footage to realize. Add to that the film’s red herring – a little fiction woven throughout the movie that I won’t reveal so that I don’t spoil the surprise – and it all just left me sort of uninterested. If I could sum it up in one word, I would say the movie was “Meh.”

Would I have liked the movie minus the archival footage and claims of truth? Maybe. It would have been a totally different movie at that point. Unfortunately, I can’t say for sure because that is not the movie I saw. In the end, I’m not quite to the point of “that is two hours of my life I’ll never get back,” but almost. If you want to see a true story, don’t go. If you find whiny, wooden delivery annoying, don’t go. If, however, you can set aside all of that and focus on a paranormal story of alien abduction, then it just might be worth a shot.

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