The Fourth Kind (2009)

the fourth kind poster The Fourth Kind (2009) The Fourth Kind is a tense drama about disappearances of the dwarven population in Gnome, Alaska.

Dwarven Cleric Yasmere Tumblebeard is portrayed by a psychiatrist chick called Abbey Tyler. She does her best to gain sympathy based on media reports and archived news stories “leaked” by the studio leading up to the release of the movie regarding the FBI’s interest of dwarves being adducted by gnomes from outerspace in Gnome, AK. It turns out the FBI was not interested in the occurrences at all, but rather it was The Society For Really Neat Coincidences (SFRNC) that showed a very unhealthy interest.

Milla Jovovich, best know for getting naked in “Resident Evil” films, plays herself playing Dwarven Cleric Yasmere Tumblebead playing fake psychiatrist Abbey Tyler. Jovovich steps out of character often to remind the viewer that absolutely everything they have seen, are seeing, and will see in the movie is completely and most certainly real.

There is some clever tension mostly successful due to voice acting, narrative, and sound editing. Much like the hide-the-pony in the dog-and-pony show method used by “Paranominal Activity,” “The Fourth Kind” attempts to scare the viewer with situational drama and what is not shown; as well as an emotional buy-in to the actor/protagonist.

“The Fourth Kind” was actually an effective movie that had some real tension. As with everything post “Paranominal Activity” and its brand of tepid suspense, I would rank “The Fourth Kind” 2.5 out of 5 Micahs (whereas the namesake “Paranominal Activity” was rewarded 0/5).

The movie uses a combination of really-real archived footage (as stressed by the honest Jovovich and director Manute Bol) along with dramatized re-enactments of the video and audio footage. Sometimes the archived footage, re-enactments, and Super Bowl highlights are all shown on the screen at the same time in a quad-view technique.

fourthkindjovoich The Fourth Kind (2009) Strange things are happening in Gnome, AK and Jovovich is there to listen to and record the results of hypno-therapy. The conclusion that one draws from these events portrayed by the really-real footage and dramatized scenes is that some weird shit is happening with the gnomes under Gnome, AK. The dwarven community is freaked out of its mind because they’re seeing owls and shit all the time in their collective dreams although the entire population knows the last owl was killed 36 years ago for Durin’s 113th birthday party (owl-kabobs are a dwarven delicacy).

The movie ends with Jovovich and a bunch of other real dwarves/acting dwarves being abducted by gnomes from Gnome while the gnomes speak in the High Elvish Language and declare themselves GOD.

There is one catch. The entire film is fake. I mean, most films are fake, but “The Fourth Kind” is fake in that fake dishonest way that makes one mad at the damn fakers to the extent the one (me) prays to Zeus for a plague of pimples to descend upon the house of the movies makers, actors, and everyone involved in “The Fourth Kind.” Fake press, doctored news stories, fake publicity, these fakers did it all. You can mislead your audience, but never lie to your audience. In a word, Fuck you (meaning them – the filmmakers).

So, if you notice something a little off in this review, that is the reason why. “The Fourth Kind” deserves the kind of review befit of the type of movie it is: Bullshit.

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I was actually looking forward to “The Fourth Kind.” The trailer at the beginning of “Paranominal Activity” was the scariest thing in the theater that day and the passing references to real case studies and owls and so forth rang basically true (to those that have read Whitley Strieber’s books and wondered at the connection to “Twin Peaks” [The owls are not what they seem...]). I was prepared for exactly what the movie pretended to be – and I did no research on the film before seeing it. I was caught off guard by the complete fakeness of the movie. I knew it was somewhat fake as soon as the really-real footage of a murder-suicide was actually shown on screen (with a blur). There is no way a “real” murder, even blurred, would be allowed in a PG-13 film. At that point I was hoping that only the really-real footage was also dramatized and that the movie still had a basis in the real events. It doesn’t.

As Ebert said in his review, a “crushing disappointment.”