New Movie On Abductions Coming On November 6
The Fourth Kind, a film that claims to be based on “documented events” (suspicious disappearances of locals over the last few years in Nome, Alaska) is scheduled for release on November 6th. The premise is that they were taken away by aliens. I watched the trailer and looked at the promo material, as well as the write-up at IMDB.
I don’t have much hope that the filmmakers used the available material to portray things accurately, but that’s never been Hollywood’s strong suit. The main problem is that there is so much creepy stuff in the abduction literature to draw from that someone could make a good horror film by trying to be at least slightly close to the reported scenario. This is the same problem I always had with The X-Files. Director/ writer Olatunde Osunsanmi seems to be either too willing to please Universal, or just doesn’t care too much about the subject to look into it thoroughly.
From the little information available so far, it appears that he read through a few websites and perhaps a couple of books to research the script, then worked these few facts into a story that, Blair Witch-like, was woven into a docudrama.
The online trailer states “In 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. The first kind: Sighting. The second kind: Evidence. The third kind: Contact. The fourth kind: Abduction.”
Wait a minute. Number four was added in the late 1980s by abduction researchers. Here’s a post I did on the subject last year. J. Allen Hynek may have just turned in his grave. Again.
The film claims to be based on the files of a psychologist who regressed people in the Nome area and found compelling evidence of abductions. The problem is that no one else seems to be able to locate her. The Anchorage Daily News looked into the case and found many “facts” announced in the film promos suspiciously lacking. Many of the comments on the article blame the Nome Police for the missing people. Perhaps no one knows the real reason for the disappearances, but bringing UFOs into the mix is apparently irritating some relatives of the missing. I’m not sure what happens during abductions, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t any documentation of missing persons associated with the scenario.
The “documented evidence” may surface in the weeks following the release of the film, but I seriously doubt it. The Fourth Kind may do for abductions what Close Encounters did for UFO research, but those who become interested in the subject as a result of viewing the film may be surprised at the difference between the movie and what has been reported. I realize that I haven’t even seen the film yet!
Or I could be wrong, and it’ll be a good movie in spite of the inaccuracies. A well-told story with a strong message can often smooth over twisted truths.
Unfortunately, a coherent message is not the strong suit of recent horror movies.
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Sep 30 2009 
October 1st, 2009 at 2:52 am
Are we expecting Hollyweird to be accurate or factual(even remotely) these days? Other than the extremely attractive Milla Jovovich, I can’t think of a decent reason of spending $7-$10 and at least 4 hours of my life going to a movie theater to see another bad film treatment of the subject of possible alien abduction. I’ll wait for the extended cut DVD with all the extras that I can rent for pennies a day through netflix. Has Hollywood ever done right by any paranormal or parapolitical subject?
October 1st, 2009 at 12:46 pm
One thing that made me hopeful about this movie is that they accurately portray experiencers recollections of watching owls as a common ’screen memory’ in the abduction lore.
Plus, there’s Mila Jovovich playing the part of the doctor. Come on, Greg! that at least is worth the cost of the ticket!!
October 1st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
It’s clearly film entertainment versus a sober documentary. A hope against hope that it illuminates the subject rather than making it more obtuse is an exercise in futility.This meme expands into new territory degenerating into electronic folklore. Fictionalizing an enigma is not a pragmatic but rather a grand old fashioned money making scheme utilizing sensationalism. That being said, is it a entertaining load of fascinating, invented rubbish skirting the issues versus a mediocre one? Are there compelling performances, or great camera work? Will I shell out money to see it in a theater? I have the sense this will appear soon enough on cable..I have no great expectations for this one..although I am looking forward to “Avatar”..by James Cameron as a good entertaining albeit fictional provocation.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:15 am
crg,
Maybe Close Encounters and The Manchurian Candidate. I’m sure there are a least a few others.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 am
RPJ,
What I’m afraid of is that pieces of info like this will be taken out of context and used as window dressing for an empty shell of a story that is long on sensationalism and short on true strangeness and psychological explication.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
Bruce,
I didn’t get a good feeling about it from the promo material. Pick and choose the sensationalistic elements while bypassing the truly strange and incongruous elements of the reports. Maybe Communion was a better example, but it flopped of course. So what?
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
“What I’m afraid of is that pieces of info like this will be taken out of context and used as window dressing for an empty shell of a story that is long on sensationalism and short on true strangeness and psychological explication.”
So, you would wish that the abduction phenomenon should stay in a cultural vaccuum? You know as well as I do that this is impossible —Furthermore, if the ‘aliens’ are as half as intelligent as I think they are, this is exactly what they want.
Anyway, regardless of what the hypothetical intentions of the aliens are: if the film manages to make the average viewer think that there’s something extraordinay behind the abduction phenomenon, i think that it would have served its purpose.
PS: Re. Communion ‘flopping’. I have sometimes wondered if books and novels that involve fringe ideas need to connect with the exact ‘zeitgest’ of the times to be succesful, regardless of their own merits. If you do the research you find that Keeley’s ideas were being proposed before by other authors, yet it was his ‘Mothman Prophecies’ the one who captured the public’s imagination; ditto with Däniken’s ideas.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
RPJ,
I don’t know if I want abductions to “stay in a cultural vacuum,” but I have specific ideas about it. I am not a film reviewer. My POV is from a decidedly esoteric viewpoint. If I don’t subscribe to the mass culture’s method of expression, so be it.
For example, I thought that the Tim Burton film Ed Wood was near perfect. It managed to convey the life of the title character almost exactly as I thought of him. That’s a selfish judgment call on my part, and so was this piece on Fourth Kind.
The other issue for me is the hopeless contamination of the database on the phenomenon, which this film apparently feeds on and further mythologizes. If things were dire before, they may become even more so with the film’s release.
Also, some films manage to riff on their subject matter in a way that seems to bring something novel to the table. Although a poor example, Mothman Prophecies featured a character who was based on Keel who Richard Gere went to for advice. His insights were closest in spirit to the original story, and made the viewer think about anomalies in a novel way (at least as I remember.)
I left some wiggle room in the pre-view review in case Fourth Kind overcomes my inital bad impressions. Based on the history of Hollywood and the paranormal however, I am not optimistic.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
RPJ,
P.S. To clarify a little:
I am very big on early, more pure sources of info. As an example, I think that Cabeza De Vaca’s account of North America in the late 16th century is invaluable as a resource, as well as a fascinating read. Bernal Diaz’ history of the conquest of Mexico is also high on my list.
Although not “pure,” The reason I like Whitley Strieber’s “visitor” work is that his mythologizing is both unique and seems to capture the absurd nature of the phenomenon. It is work of artistic merit which unhooks us from the standard story. I fear little similarity with the new abduction film, although somewhat like Orson Welles’ F For Fake, it may put us in touch with how much film (especially films pretending to be a “documentary” or based on “documented facts”) can make us believe in almost anything by the nature of what documentaires are supposed to be (objective and factual.)