The Fourth Kind

A UFO sighting is considered the alien encounter of the first kind.

Collected evidence is the second kind.

Contact with the extraterrestrial is the third kind.

And the fourth kind.......abduction.

Sometimes I like to multitask while watching movies that I'm not really into so I can say I watched it and not have to sit there in complete agony or boredom while trying to finish a not very good movie.  I thought The Fourth Kind would be one of these movies so I planned on wrapping presents while watching.  Well surprisingly, the movie was actually good.  It definitely kept my eyes glued to the screen.  The Fourth Kind was released in 2009 and written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi who makes an appearance in the film interviewing the real Abbey Tyler.  Osunsanmi hasn't really directed any major or popular films but he has done various crew jobs on other films.  I honestly think he did an amazing job, but I'll get to that after the background.

The Fourth Kind is based on the true story of supposed alien abductions in Nome, Alaska that took place in October of 2000.  After her husband's murder, psychologist Dr Abigail Tyler begins videotaping sessions with her patients when she learns that they've all had similar problems with sleeping and seeing an owl at night.  The videos often become distorted.

Even though I'm a skeptic on all things supernatural (great show though!) and extraterrestrial related, I still feel a little eerie talking about this.  What I enjoyed about this movie is the comparison between the dramatization and the archive footage.  I love it when movies try to scare you by using actual footage, but this was really cool.  At times they even had the real people talking at the same time that the actors portraying them were talking.  Some people may find the split screen confusing or annoying but I love watching comparisons.  Its nice to watch how accurate people try to be.  Now I watched this with my sister who is also a psychologist so it was nice having the scientific view of things as well.  She kept commenting on how crazy Dr. Tyler was during the footage of her actual interview with the director of the film.  As mentioned earlier, I myself am a skeptic and "non-believer" as you can call it because I believe there's a scientific or reasonable explanation for everything.  For those Nicholas Sparks fans out there, one of my favorite characters has to be Jeremy Marsh from his book True Believer.  Read it and you'll understand why.  Anyway, I almost believed that it was real, which meant the director did a great job making the actors (not just the characters) believable.  If the actor portraying a character isn't believable it can ruin the whole movie, trust me.  Well my sister's final thought was that it was all a hoax and the crazy lady made it up.  She even tampered with her tapes which in 2000 can be done pretty easily.  Whether this was true or not, I still found the movie quite entertaining.  Releasing at the same time as the overrated Paranormal Activity made me a little nervous as to how it would do but it made over $12 million opening weekend, while Paranormal Activity made only about $77,000.

All in all it was a good show, I probably would have paid to see it in the theater.  I don't think it got as much hype as it deserved, but maybe that's why it was good because I was expecting less.  Anyway, its not an amazing Academy Award winning film, but I do recommend watching it if you want to be freaked out or a little spooked.