Thursday, November 5, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW: The Fourth Kind

THE WORST KIND:

I was privelleged enough to win a pre-screening ticket to this movie on smellslikescreenspirit.com, and I will do my best, now, to take on the role of the film critic.  [insert cheezy French accent] ...bud why ze french haccent, yew ask?  eh, ...how do yew say ...just for ze fun!

       Okay, this movie claims to contain actual video and audio clips from actual psychiatric patients who have participated in a sleep disorder study under the real Dr. Abigail Tyler.  -And there is a LOT of audio and video footage throughout the movie.  [SPOILER ALERT] In fact, some of this footage shows the patients convulsing in terror and then mysteriously levitating!  So all of these patients are having terrible nightmares which are difficult to remember, ...but they all remember white owls with large eyes staring at them.  Turns out, the dreams are actually real, and the owls are actually aliens.  Then, late one night while recording her thoughts on tape, Dr. Tyler conveniently falls asleep without stopping the tape -and as the tape plays back we hear (within seconds) her door squeaks open, she starts screaming bloody murder and these deep, cheezy, robotic & distorted sounding alien voices start shouting things in the ancient Sumerian language.  A professor of ancient language is able to translate part of this Sumerian speak, and all the while, the movie asserts that these recordings are legitimate, and that all of this is documented and real.
        Turns out, (according to many sources), as hard as this may be to fathom, everything in this movie is made up.  The crappy part is, it looks and sounds insultingly fake as well.  As much as I'd love a real-life type alien abduction movie to believe, I found myself sighing dissapointedly, "give me a break," way too many times, almost from the very beginning.  The "actual Dr. Tyler," supposedly severely mentally ill or traumatized, looks like she's wearing a pound of white make up with shadow.

       Yet, the very worst part of this film, is that it takes the very real phenomenon of alien abduction, combines it with a few "exorcist-type" levitation elements, and ties it up with some Sumerian-speaking demon aliens, thereby making a complete mockery of many things that may actually true or interesting.  There are dozens of genuinely fascinating pieces of historical evidence regarding Von Daniken's "ancient astronaut theory," but by using bits of this fascinating information, this movie craps on all of that, giving people one more reason to say, "see, that's all a load of shite."  There are countless well-documented accounts of alien abduction from all around the world, yet none of them (that I'm familiar with) involve evil, Sumerian-speaking dragon aliens who claim to be God. (they never actually show the aliens -I just threw 'dragon' in there for the heck of it)

      Don't get me wrong, though; Having said all of that, it was still a somewhat decent time at le cinema.

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