The Fourth Kind

[David Biedny]

Yeah, I think you are missing something - it's being marketed as "based on real events", and this is not a good thing for advancing the idea of rational discussion of related topics. I enjoy a good flick as much as the next person, and I'm a big sci-fi fan, but when it comes to this specific film, it's muddying the waters precisely because a majority of folks seem to think there's some truth behind it.

dB

 

[aNorthernSoul]

Yeah, I think you are missing something - it's being marketed as "based on real events", and this is not a good thing for advancing the idea of rational discussion of related topics. I enjoy a good flick as much as the next person, and I'm a big sci-fi fan, but when it comes to this specific film, it's muddying the waters precisely because a majority of folks seem to think there's some truth behind it.

dB

Yeah, while I was really interested in this film as entertainment, I'm a little distressed to learn it's being marketed as based on real events.

 

[TClaeys]

I hear you David. It certainly doesn't help any discussion. Whenever I hear "based on real events", I'm always like OK sure, uh huh. I've seen it a lot of times where the true event might be a restaurant some people were eating at. Or something just as obscure. Just enough to hook the potential audience, with little respect to actual important events.

Wasn't "Fire in the Sky" the same thing?? And we know how that sort of played out. The real events weren't all the scary as hell events.

What is perhaps odd though is that a lot of people have an interest and they are pretty let down when they find out the real events are not indeed real. I have a feeling that a lot of people are interested in the subject, but unable to find themselves engaging in conversation about it. I certainly don't except here. My family and friends have no idea that I have an interest in the topic, ... well except my wife (which I rarely ever discuss anything UFO related)

I think people would talk about it given some acceptable safe forum, although we seem to be a long way from that. The film though probably does both confuse and interest people at the same time. Nonetheless, you are right, it doesn't engage rational discussion, it just reinforces the fantasy aspect.

 

[bogie13p]

Wow, after a bit of researching this, I found out that the people making this movie really went out of their way to make this story more convincing. The newspaper in that town is called the Nome Nugget and they used one of the papers actual writers names to fake archived Nome Nugget stories.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache...ommy+stapleton++nome&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

This is another fake article written by the movie makers:



She Sees You When You're Sleeping

The Nome Nugget
Nancy McGuire
July, 1997

Nomeites take certain things for granted like the fact that for part of the year we have too much sun and for part of the year there's too much dark. That's just the way it is. But folks from the lower 48 still find it fascinating.

Dr. Abigail Tyler is an experimental psychologist specializing in sleep disorders who has recently moved to Nome with her husband and two children to catalog the psychological effects of what she calls "unconventional sleep patterns which have adapted to fixed environmental factors." She's talking about the sun.

"A lot has been written about the physiological effects and short-term changes in mood brought on by lack of uninterrupted sleep. I'm trying to look at longer-term effects," Dr. Tyler explained. "When this is your life, not just a phase, when you are used to it but are still affected . . . what does that do? What does that bring out?"

Dr. Tyler explains that Nome has an incredibly high rate of sleep disorders, a fact well-known by anyone with a phone book.

"Both my husband and I were very impressed by the people and community here, particularly the strong, active part that the native culture plays," Dr. Tyler said. The idea for the study was even presented to the Bering Straits Native Corporation, and Dr. Tyler was able to meet with the Board of Directors. "The BSNC was very respectful and very gracious and promised to help me do outreach in recruiting natives from the area to be part of the study."

Dr. Tyler plans on recruiting potential subjects by speaking at the next meeting of the City Council and placing an advertisement in this paper.



I guess someone emailed Nancy McGuire asking if these articles were genuine and she says she never wrote either article and that this stuff was never published in the Nome Nugget.

How evil is using an actual real writers name to make fake articles to go along with a movie plot without that writers permission?!?! Seriously yo, that is totally wank.

 

[methshin]

I find it funny that they have portrayed Nome as a forested mountain town. Last I checked, Nome was a bunch of huts in the middle of a snowy field.

 

[Kieran]

I Think when you mix truth with lies and claim everything you are watching is based on real events, naturally some people who came to watch a movie with no prior knowledge to the abduction phenomenon will go away with the belief after the movie, what they saw is how it is.

UFO's and the Sumerian culture really interests me how people always find a connection here.I think people have the belief, that Middle Eastern countries have more to tell than most' why i do not no, is it a Hollywood influence? or is a culture putting their own belief on it.

 

[DVS]

I tend to agree with TClaeys here. Although, I understand that while some people may be turned off by the 'based on real events and archival footage' marketing campaign and storyline because nobody like to be fooled or treated like gullible believers. It just creative marketing, calm down!

I've read reviews saying there was no real footage in the movie and are disappointed thus giving it bad reviews. Some people just have what I like to say 'Blair Witch Syndrome' where they become so gullible to a point of shock and disbelief that its actually not real. From what I've read the movie is different than the typical Paranormal Activity / Blair Witch type movies.

I read Bud Hopkins review and I obviously immensely respect him and his career in abductions as he is a bonafide expert in the field. However, he is viewing it from a different angle based on his experience. I understand his notion that hypnosis is being misrepresented in the movie because of its apparent attempts to shock and horrify the audience. He said: "I've observed actual screams in perhaps six or seven of the nearly two thousand hypnosis sessions." While this is obviously true, wouldn't that make for a really boring and uneventful movie? Although the hypnosis sessions might not be action packed, the abduction itself is still a horrifying event for many people as I understand. As far as this movie is concerned, I think its an attempt to convey that aspect of abductions without showing an actual abduction.

Still, I see read no special-effects aliens or UFOs are actually depicted as something rather intriguing. It does seem more of a suspense/horror movie than actual sci-fi movie. Yes, I am intersted in this movie as there really has not been any type of movie on this topic for a good while. I just have to say its just a movie, I'm going to give it a fair chance. I didn't see it yet but when I do I will be the first to give it a big fat "FAIL" if it deserves it.

 

[mikec]

Ooops - David B. beat me to it...

From Bud Hoppkins Intruders Foundation web-site. His harsh review.


THE FOURTH KIND
A MOVIE TO AVOID

By Budd Hopkins

On Tuesday, Nov. 3, as I sat in a theater being bombarded with soundtrack noise - screams – many screams – and melodramatic, over-the-top music, I was watching the new, self-described UFO abuction film, The Fourth Kind, and wondering how the screenwriters could get so many things wrong. Ostensibly set in Nome, Alaska – which, by the way, looks ravishingly pretty in the film’s many elaborate aerial views - the plot is focused on a therapist and her clients who have apparently suffered UFO abductions, and at least one of these “abductees,” the therapist’s little daughter, seems to have been taken for good. The film moves along, more or less propelled by fake hypnosis sessions in which virtually every subject screams bloody murder. One man, grotesquely unhinged by what he remembers during one such session, actually commits murder, blowing away his innocent wife, his two children and himself. And in this and every other case shown in the movie, apart from an owl at the window no one has previously remembered anything about his or her abduction experiences until hypnosis finally unlocks the ghastly, unbearable truth and the screaming starts.

Underlying all of this fictional, never before reported malarky, the film’s pseudo-documentary style strains to convince us that everything depicted is “supported by actual case material.” Well, after thirty-three years of working with hundreds upon hundreds people reporting UFO abduction experiences, I can say, first, that in no case has anyone ever reported the permanent disappearance of a friend, a family member or anyone even vaguely connected with my huge pool of subjects. The sort of final, “taken-by-the-aliens disappearance” that the film suggests simply doesn’t happen - though, unfortunately, this tragic turn in the screenplay could disturb many uninformed people in a real-world audience.

Second, the hyper-emotional reactions mimed by the actors are almost non-existent in competently conducted hypnosis sessions. I’ve observed actual screams in perhaps six or seven of the nearly two thousand hypnosis sessions I’ve been present for, or carried out myself, over three decades, and have never seen the kind of mindless terror, vomiting and crashing about that the movie graphically, and shamelessly, forces upon the audience.

In a third bizarre invention, the screenwriters have entangled an ancient Sumerian language with the abduction phenomenon, so in this movie the aliens apparently speak Sumerian. Why is that, especially when communication in abduction experiences is almost inevitably telepathic? Is it because this tasty bit of fiction allows the camera to pan over a museum full of scary-looking ancient artifacts?

I could go on and on with the issues of fact, taste and simple plotting that I have with this movie, but I haven’t the heart or the patience to do so. The bottom line is this: save your $12.50 or whatever a ticket costs at your local theater, and if you should suspect that you may have had an abduction experience, absolutely stay away. Such a viewer could be deeply unsettled by this noisy, fictional mishmash, which, as I’ve said, involves murder, gunfire and suicide, as well as seemingly endless minutes of blurred, fake video imagery which the filmmakers insist is “real.” (Mercifully, no special-effects aliens or UFOs are actually depicted.)

Despite the “unbearable terrors” of hypnotic recall that this movie claims to demonstrate, if a person should undergo hypnotic exploration of partially recalled abduction experiences, that individual will not pick up a pistol afterwards and shoot somebody, none of her family members will be permanently abducted, and he probably won’t do very much helpless screaming. Those things seem to happen only in certain kinds of lurid sci-fi or horror movies, of which The Fourth Kind is an extremely unfortunate mixture.

_________________________________________________

(link)
http://www.intrudersfoundation.org/Forth_Kind.html

Ooops - David B. beat me to it...

 

[DVS]

David already posted that link. :redface:

 

[Unky]

If I want to see Mila, I'll make do with Fifth Element or Dazed and Confused (her first film, if I'm not wrong, and an overall classic favorite)

MJ's first movie was Two Moon Junction.

After reading Hopkins review one would think anyone in the abduction community would have a scathing reaction to the film, but there have been positive appraisals as well. John Velez wrote a positive review of the film and seems to have liked it.

I noticed the Wikipedia caches I posted earlier in the thread appear to have been strangely "corrected".

 

[DVS]

I finally saw it and it was total FAIL. :exclamation:

Not for the marketing, but the way they tried to make it alien abductions meets the exorcist was just horrible. The "raw footage" actors were way more believable than the mainstream actors. Bud Hopkins was right. They really did the field a disservice when they had people doing things like levitating while under hypnosis.

Man, it would be great if they actually did make some kind alien abduction movie worthwhile.