The Fourth Kind [Blu-ray]

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by: Michelle Entezari (Carlsbad, CA USA)
on: Monday, 25-October-2010

This is one of those movies that really gets under your skin and leaves you persistently unsettled long after the movie ends. I have never given the whole UFO sighting phenomenon much credit, but this movie makes the concept seem incredibly legitimate. For the record, I dont think most horror films are any good - I was not very scared watching Paranormal Activity or any of those sort of movies - but this is like The Shining (psychologically) combined with a documentary, making it really terrifying. I dont think you will regret it. If you really want to scare yourself, watch it when you are on vacation in an isolated town in Alaska.

by: Channel KDK12 (New Orleans, LA)
on: Saturday, 23-October-2010

A tale of alien abduction and the reality of reality, The Fourth Kind is a mix of pseudo-documentary footage and fictionalized recreation. A widowed psychiatrist, Abigail Tyler, is disturbed when her sleep-disordered patients all tell the hauntingly same story. Under hypnosis, they tell tales of alien abduction, enhanced by an unusual presentation in which a split screen shows what is purported to be actual footage of the patients and a simultaneous recreation of the events they describe. Little by little, Tyler becomes increasingly frightened herself, and begins to believe their stories, and then that she and her whole family are victims of abduction.

The Fourth Kind recalls movies like Communion and Fire in the Sky, but is unique in that it plays with our beliefs about truth and fiction on many levels. A complex and deeply unsettling movie.

by: Errol Icsel (Houston, Texas)
on: Tuesday, 5-October-2010

This movie was senseless, but Ill give it three stars for actually being creepy. Milla J. plays Dr. Abigail Taylor as does some celebrated British actress. It was weird, half the movie is in split screen with cam-corder footage of the sposed real events. Redundant and annoying film style, the 10 million budget split between New Zealand and Buglaria is not likely to help this Directors Carreer, but the movie didnt bomb at the box office, so maybe they will let him do more. I hope he learned from his mistakes. Milla J. was great in the Fifth Element, but hasnt had a decent script since, appearently.

I will say that this movie was well researched, in terms of conspiracy lore. David Icke, Jordan Maxwell, and John Lamb Lash have their work at the center of all this, and the story sucked me in. I did my job as a movie watcher, to suspend my disbelief, but the constant insistance that I believe-believe was too much, although they did it with interesting surrealism. Was I supposed to smoke the ganja first?

This movie does quite a bit with owls and as a side-note, Israelis and Palestinians share more than just a land claim. They are noted for their owl phobia, so this movie will play well in the middle east should it be screened there, but it didnt work with me, and I was never more proud to be a rational gentile. Owls? Seriously? Why not poodles? I feel sorry for anyone who has a phobia problem, especially with cute animals.

Watch this movie with the movies Communion, Insomnia, and that should have you properly dreaming of your next colonoscopy.

by: TastyBabySyndrome (Daddy Dagons Daycare - Proud Sponsor of the Little)
on: Tuesday, 5-October-2010

The movie is one that centers around some rather disturbing things that happened in Alaska. It leaves a lot open to the viewer, too, and sometimes that is good. Sometimes it is bad, too, and it also ruins a few of the moives scenes. A lot of the movie is films in split screen or has real audio playing before or after it is acted out. Sometimes this kills the creativity that is being displayed and sometimes it shows you just how much goes into the interpration of actors. One scene out of everything stuck with me here, however, and it was one with a patient taking a family hostage. In one area you see the family and, in another, you see the people acting it out. Then you see both as the family and the father - the hostage taker - turn his gun on everyone and kill them all.
It was horrid and yet it said something on the reality of what was going on.

The one thing that everyone had in common was seeing an Owl that was not an owl, but that was thought to be a sign of abduction. There were quite a few oddities here, too, like the things on some of the tapes and some of the possibilities for languages. Still, some of it was not really scientific. The art of recalling memory,for example, is not really a scientific fact. If anything, it was fancy at the time and showing the tapes of it shows how many gaps are there. Sure, people want to believe and, sure, they make tapes that seem strange. The problem is that there is a level of expectation and, much like a parent seeing their child show off to them, this happens here as well.

I say this because I thought some of the showing hurt the movie. In the end you think what you want and you see that something possibly happened to these people. Is it a good thing - no. Is it a proven thing - no. The tapes brought in to suggest it was hurt the movie sometimes and, in some cases, make a case for something other than the suggestion of aliens.
It is creepy here and there, too, but I would have rather had my stars lghting up the sky and not a shellschocked doctor and her peers/patients/whomever making things slide progressively downhill.

That took this to about a 3.6, but rounding it to a 4 makes it seem right because some of it is captivating enough to see more than once.

by: B. E Jackson (Pennsylvania)
on: Sunday, 3-October-2010

The best way to describe the Fourth Kind is that its not particularly scary.

Alright, the owls definitely gave me the creeps, and a few other scenes involving Milla Jovovichs character were quite bizarre, but for the most part, the storyline is fairly basic in the sense that you know some quality suspense is coming, but NOT necessarily some downright frightening scenes.

Basically the film has a pretty good atmosphere, but it never truly scares me like the writers intended. I can tell they set out to make the ultimate horror film but it never quite reaches that level of uncontrollable fear. Its just tense, sometimes shocking, but worth watching because the storyline is really good.

I recommend watching it, just dont be surprised if you enjoy the storyline but dont find it frightening.

by: Kandice Parker (Nevada, USA)
on: Thursday, 30-September-2010

I rate this a 4 out of 5 because I do not like this movie. It was honestly too scary. I have only seen this once, which was at the movie theater when it premiered. I have always been creeped out by the thought of aliens, but I saw this anyways thinking this movie would be no big deal. I saw this with my husband and dad, and none of us have seen it since. I wont ever watch it again because after I saw this I could not sleep, and I still have trouble sleeping when I think of this movie. Everyone I know who has seen it will not see it again, and I keep trying to get my sister to watch it, but she wont because no one wants to see it with her (even though she wants to see it). I thought it was strange that this movie didnt even get a media announcement when it came out on DVD. I guess its just too scary! To me, all of the footage seemed real, and they leave it up to you to decide... And the Doctor, the real woman, seemed scary herself, like something really did happen to her. So just a warning, if this sort of thing creeps you out, dont bother watching it... read all the reviews that tell you the same thing!

by: Laura S. (Sacramento, CA USA)
on: Monday, 13-September-2010

After doing a little research, it appears that the original video segments were faked. In many different scenes that they were re-enacting, they did not even try to make clothes, furniture etc. look the same. This takes away from a very real problem in our society. Alien abductions are not new, and it is disappointing that they took something which was probably real and tried to discredit it by faking old video footage. Having been around UFO investigators since I was a kid, the story is probably true.

As our government has done so many times in the past, tell the truth by doing it in such a fraudulent way as to discredit the truth. I believe this is the case. If you look past the fact that they tried to make it look false, therefore blurring the truth, then there is much good information there. Look to your gut for truth. Something did happen, and I would not have put these encounters past Marduk or Enlil.

by: Michael Ledo (Windsor, SC United States)
on: Tuesday, 31-August-2010

In remote Nome Alaska, a pyschologist has discovered her patients may be part of a mass alien abduction. She later realizes that she is also a victim of the same. In order to make the movie seem realistic they juxtapostion actual tapes into the movie. The acting is good and the movie seems very realistic. Now for the bogus points(possible plot spoilers): The aliens spoke Sumerian. No one on earth knows what the dead language sounded like. Plus the language had so many variations and dialects ... That whole translation stuff was bogus. 2) The tapes? Lets see, abduction, murder, suicide, missing people...I think those tapes would be locked away in an evidence vault as well as using actual tapes would violate all patient-doctor ethical standards. Third, there are no aliens visiting earth. Fourth, we all know aliens abduct people in Mississippi, not Alaska. If you are interested in the astral-religion of Sumeria and of the Bible, may I suggest On Earth as it is in Heaven, The Cosmic Roots of the Bible by Michael Ledo. I own the first autographed copy.

Dilmun was actually more advanced than Sumeria and the Akkadians were the real brains behind Sumeria. Most people dont realize those facts, all they know is Sumeria from the 12th Planet nonsense. Apparently they didnt consult a real expert in Sumerian before they made the movie.

If you like reality type movies such as that dog, Paranormal Activities, this movie may be for you.

by: Rick H (NC)
on: Monday, 30-August-2010

This film is an interesting take on the alien abduction theory, borrowing from the fake documentary style of the Blair Witch Project and is also very similar to The Mothman Prophecies (which, btw, Will Patton was also in). Regardless of the negative reviews here (or elsewhere), the film is pretty darn creepy in that it actually goes beyond the alien theory. Maybe the stories in this film are all made up but based on actual case histories? Whatever the case, this movie was pretty attention-grabbing from start to finish. Highly recommended especially if youre interested in the subject matter and if you liked the two movies mentioned above - I thought The Fourth Kind was better than either of them.

by: tony (booneville, ms)
on: Wednesday, 18-August-2010

Very convincing with the actual interviews being shown. Makes one wonder if there is something to what happened.

by: Jerry P. Danzig (New York, NY USA)
on: Wednesday, 18-August-2010

Well, this less-is-more alien abduction film suckered me, but then Ive been trying to figure out for some time how enough citizens, even in an isolated state like Alaska, could ever have voted for Sarah Palin as governor, even for the mercifully short term she stayed in office.

The gimmick here -- and its well done -- is that they show supposed actual footage of events and testimony that were alleged to have taken place, alongside the glossy Hollywood reenactment of the same.

So, for example, you have the luscious Milla Jovovich playing the psychologist in Nome, Alaska who wonders why a number of her patients are having trouble sleeping and are all reporting similar events depriving them of sleep. Meanwhile we see grainy footage of a college professor interviewing the real psychologist, a middle-aged woman who seems to be suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder.

I dont know why the critics were so unkind to this film. Perhaps they were upset by the hoax being perpetrated here. All I know is, this film creeped me out in spades and suspended my disbelief for the length of its running time.

Fans of alien abduction films will enjoy The Fourth Kind. Those who hate The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activities should probably stay away.

by: Newton Ooi (Phoenix, Arizona United States)
on: Monday, 16-August-2010

I saw this DVD during the daytime, and thought it was one of the scariest movies Ive seen in a long while. Created as a recreation of actual events, this docudrama is about a psychologists examination of victims of alien abductions in her home town of Gnome, Alaska. These abductions are known as the Fourth Kind of alien contact. The psychologist puts her patients under hypnosis during which time they relive their abduction with scary detail. There are few special effects as most of the horror is induced by what is happening off-screen, hence no gore. This forces the script to rely on the dialogue and situation to convey the terror, which is good. And like any good horror movie, the ending is sad and open-ended. All in all, a good movie.

by: J from NY (New York)
on: Saturday, 14-August-2010

Director Olatunde Osunsanmi drops the ball occasionally with this film, theres no denying that--having Milla Jovovich (Dr. Abbey Tyler) approach the camera at the beginning, looking every inch a Hollywood actress, telling us that what we are about to see are interviews with abductees and the rest of it. He did not handle the premise nearly as well as the makers of Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch, etc, and I suspect that otherwise this would be in the top ranks of a lot of the horror films made today.

If one can overlook that mole, this is a startling and at times really scary film which approaches alien abduction from a different vantage point: if an alien entity did indeed exist it would not necessarily be a benevolent force in the universe. Indeed, it may be the exact opposite: a malign and vicious phenomena which destroys the human psyche at random and reduces human beings to mere husks of what they were. It provides some real chills to see (Charlotte Milchard) the Real Dr. Abbey Tyler being interviewed about her experiences, looking like a half alien and half annorexic who has had the life quite literally scared out of her.


The films basic premise is the destruction of a small town, and Jovovich plays a shrink who is unfortunate enough to have most of her patients end up getting into contact with some kind of alien intelligence. The White Owl is a Lovecraftian image used regularly throughout the movie--all the abductees report witnessing an appalling, disgusting image of a white owl outside their windows. One commits suicide and takes his family with him, leading the town sherrif (Will Patton hamming it up again) to believe that Tyler is somehow responsible for these events. The mood of psychological disturbance is amped up to the max when she begins to videotape these interviews and the patients are sometimes literally torn apart by their psychic distress. The archival footage is what makes this film. I dont think theres much ambiguity here: Tyler was not crazy and whether her husband really did commit suicide or not, he was in all likelihood a victim of the same presence. This movie is thoroughly frightening, and not to be taken lightly because of the slightly goofy way the filmmaker decided to handle the real interview concept.

by: maskedgamer (United States)
on: Wednesday, 11-August-2010

I strayed away from this film for the longest seeing it having as many negative reviews as positive reviews but I honestly hate myself for doing so. This was a very well developed film that really makes you think. Its a movie mixed in with a semi documentary about the experience of Alien abductions and skepticism. The movie really doesnt take any sides it only presents you with evidence.

This isnt Signs so dont expect to go into watching this expecting to see some sort of creature at the end. The film really plays on your mind and leaves you wondering just what is happening to these people. You dont have to be into alien phenomenon to enjoy this. It adds much suspense to the story to make it frightening enough.

The big catch of the movie is that the director mixed in real footage and audio from the original accounts. I honestly dont think its the real footage or audio but instead a remake of the occurrences put into the film and then placed as original and then the film remakes the remake (confusing enough?)but I doubt it was anything at all like what they portrayed in the film.I expect it to be highly exaggerated.

The Fourth Kind isnt a film for everyone. If your the type that needs to see action sequences this isnt the film for you. This is the type of movie designed to play on your mind. If your scared as hell of aliens like I am you will enjoy this film. If you enjoy extra terrestrial phenomenon you will enjoy this film. If your not opened minded but enjoy a good thriller you will enjoy this film (youll just like certain characters more). If your going into this film expecting close encounters,signs,batteries not included....or whatever this isnt the film for you.

by: Mary Kemp (USA)
on: Thursday, 22-July-2010

Well,what makes it so scary is the thought that it may be real. Having the real doctor and the actress doctor was a smooth move on the directors part. However, the real doctor was an actress too,here is her web site [...]

by: Anja Rebekka Schultze (Norway)
on: Friday, 9-July-2010

The Forth Kind claim to be an reenactment of real life events. The story is about a psychologist who is struggling after her husband was murdered. Soon she discover that several of her patients tell the same and very disturbing tales of seeing a white owl outside their window. Soon the small community of Nome is shook by violent and unexplained events. The movie shifts between film footage and what is claimed to be real life footage, the result can get rather creepy at times, and that is what this movie excel at, it is scary, the whole this is real explanation makes it rather creepy. The movie do not have much blood and gore, but it uses sounds, lighting and camera work very effectively. The story is interesting and the acting is quite good.

However there is a catch, the movie makers claim the movie to be real, most if not all of those claims have been refuted. The pepole in this film are characters, not real pepole. Unfortunately such scams hurt the credibility of real UFO phenomena. This movie tries to take a Blair Witch, claiming it had real footage, it do not, the woman in the interview is an actress, the story of this movie is pure fiction. The phenomena of alien abduction however is not, and the claims this movie makes just hurt the credibility of those who tell real stories.

All in all however this is a well crafted, creepy horror movie. If you like movies like the Blair Witch and the like you will love this one. I would have given it four stars, but I dislike the movie makers lying and claiming the movie to be based on a real story, when it clearly is not. There might be hints of truth here and there, but the whole story with the doctor and her patients, that is all made up.

by: JESSE DEROUEN (USA)
on: Friday, 2-July-2010

Thanks for letting me know Im free to believe what I want Milla! I personally believe it is a Hollywood creation, which is fine by me. I see the line between real and fake is getting blurrier and blurrier for films these days, to the point theyre faking footage for the purpose of storytelling. I would have enjoyed it more if it were just admittedly fiction.

Still, it was creepy; you wont find me in Nome; and, I watched it during the day! (just so happens!)

by: G. Burns (St. Louis, MO USA)
on: Monday, 21-June-2010

I wont get into the plot or anything. You can look that up, but if this movie is fake and they invented the whole thing it is a work of genius. If the movie and footage is real, we are all in bad trouble. Plain and simple. Killer film, either way.

by: Jack Young (United States)
on: Sunday, 20-June-2010

The film managed to present credible degree of plausibility on its story. It does not exaggerate it with special effects. While its shown a fictional movie, the introduction by the lead actress Milla Jovovich on the character shes playing added realism to the show.

In fact, the show tried to use extensive footage from the lead character Dr. Abigail Tyler that were featured from her hypnosis sessions and afew on situations surrounding her that were gotten from the police. The flims presentation and somber tone gave it a good mix that its trying to be as realistic and as close to a semi-documentary as possible.

A lot of critics dissent whether the events that happen are real. Given the length the director went through to super-impose the raw images and Milla Jovovich reassurance from the start of the flim that it was real, I am not sure how much they are expecting, short of having a personal intimate experience on the subject.

On the other hand, the director can never claim for it to be documentary given the lack of facts related to such a theme (of the fourth kind). Afterall, its not an animal documentary. Thus far, I also havent read any law-enforcement officers disputing the contents and trips made by the FBI to Nome. To me, thats as real as it gets.
The only distraction I have, is probably why does the real Abigail Tyler looked so ghostly. It was not known that for a person with her exposure would looked ghostly.

On the whole, I would give the film a 4 stars for the realism it portrays and the attention it managed to sustain on the viewers throughout the film.

by: Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
on: Saturday, 19-June-2010

At the beginning of The Fourth Kind, actress Milla Jovovich addresses the came and tells us that she is the actress Milla Jovovich and that she will be playing a real person, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler. That is because the events in this film supposedly all happened in Nome, Alaska. As anybody who has seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind might guess from the title, this 2009 film has something to do with aliens; UFO researcher J. Allen Hyneks original three classifications have been expanded by others to seven, of which the fourth is alien abduction. It seems that while there are video recordings of many of Dr. Tylers, instead of making a documentary, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi, has combined the real footage with the recreations by Jovovich and the other actors. Throughout the film we not only switch back and forth between the real and the dramatizations, but often we will see both on screen at the same time. Additionally, there is a lot of reading to do in this film, because a lot of what is being said is unintelligible otherwise and there are also these annoying reminders that Will Patton is an actor.

Every since I started reading the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as A Princess of Mars, which often begin with a declaration that there story is true or the author found the manuscript, I have been aware that just because something says it is true, it is not necessarily true. That applies to not only things like The Amityville Horror or Fargo, but also you standard biopics or any depictions of historical (a.k.a. real) events. I do not believe politicians or people selling products on television, but I am going to treat anything I see in a movie as what really happened? Not going to happen. But every since The Blair Witch Project, which successfully suckered a heck of a lot of people (including my oldest daughter) into believing it was real after seeing the documentary on television, filmmakers have been trying to make lightning strike twice. The closest a film has come to succeeding in that regard has been Paranormal Activity, and that is not because I ever entertained any belief that the story was true, but rather because it had the same sort of simplicity that made Blair Witch work. In contrast to either of those films, The Fourth Kind is at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to keeping things simple.

The fault for this films failure lies more in the motive for the elaborate insistence that this is a true story, which Osunsanmi felt was necessary to construct because basically a lot of his key scenes are patients, under hypnosis, talking to a psychiatrist. This is not a situation that makes for thrilling filmmaking, and usually involves flashbacks (e.g., Suddenly, Last Summer) or the recreation of dream imagery (e.g., Spellbound, where Hitchcock used Salvadore Dali to come up with the imagery). I think that is the reason for complicating things with the wall of competing images. So it is not surprising that the parts of the movie that I thought were most effective were far removed from that nonsense, namely when Sheriff August (Patton) interrogates Abby about what the hell has been happening and confronts her with some pretty brutal realities. I have always liked Pattons quiet intensity and Jovovichs scenes with him are the best I have seen her do in a movie, which is while I end up rounding up on this movie. But they are not enough to really make The Fourth Kind worth the time and trouble of dealing with the rest of that nonsense.