In 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document… until now.
Structured unlike any film before it, The Fourth Kind is a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where—mysteriously since the 1960s—a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered.
Here in this remote region, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) began videotaping sessions with traumatized patients and unwittingly discovered some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented. Using never-before-seen archival footage that is integrated into the film, “The Fourth Kind” exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses.
The Fourth Kind is an American science fiction-horror film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, starring Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Corey Johnson, Will Patton, and Mia Mckenna-Bruce. The title is derived from the expansion of J. Allen Hynek’s classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind denotes alien abductions.
About the Story
Chapman University hosts a televised interview with psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich). She tells a story of a close encounter incident at Nome, Alaska, in October 2000.
In August 2000, Tyler’s husband, Will, is mysteriously murdered one night in his sleep, leaving her to raise their two children, Ashley (Mia Mckenna-Bruce) and Ronnie (Raphael Coleman).
Tyler tapes hypnotherapy sessions with three different patients, all of whom have the same experience: every night they see a white owl staring at them through their windows. Tyler puts two of the three patients under hypnosis, and while under, both patients recount similar terrifying stories of creatures attempting to enter their homes.
Tommy Fisher (Corey Johnson), her first patient to go under hypnosis, refuses to admit what he sees and instead returns home. Later that night, Abbey is called by the police to Tommy’s house, where she finds him holding his whole family at gunpoint. He insists that he remembers everything, and keeps asking what the words “Zimabu Eter” mean. Despite Abbey’s repeated attempts to get Tommy to put his gun down, he eventually shoots his wife and two children, before turning the gun on himself.
After hearing the similarities in the accounts of nightly occurrences, Abbey suspects these patients may have been victims of a non-human kidnapping. There is evidence that she herself may have been abducted when an assistant of hers gives her a tape recorder, the tape plays her voice and then there is the sound of something with a distorted electronic voice entering her home and attacking her.
The attacker speaks in an unknown language. Abbey, though, has no memory of it. Dr. Abel Campos (Elias Koteas), a psychologist from Anchorage and Tyler’s colleague, is suspicious of the claims. Later, Tyler calls upon Dr. Odusami (Hakeem Kae-Kazim), a specialist in ancient languages who was a contact of her late husband, to identify the mysterious language that is spoken during the supposed abductions. Odusami identifies the language as Sumerian.
Another, more willing patient named Scott (Enzo Cilenti) wishes to communicate. He admits that there was no owl, and speaks of “them” but cannot remember anything further, but does say that he knows why Tommy did what he did. Later, he insists she come to his home to hypnotize him, to get something seemingly horrific out of his head. But while he is under, he suddenly jerks upright and begins hovering above his bed, while a distorted electronic voice coming out of his mouth tells Dr. Tyler in Sumerian to immediately end her study. Later, Sheriff August (Will Patton) arrives, telling her that Scott had 3 upper vertebrae completely severed from his experience, and was completely paralyzed. The Sheriff tries to arrest her, but Dr. Campos comes to her defense, seemingly confirming her story. The Sheriff instead places her under house arrest.
Police dash-cam footage is shown of a large black object flying over the Tyler house. The video then distorts, but the deputy is heard describing people being pulled out of the house. Deputies rush into the house, finding Ronnie and Dr. Tyler, who is desperately sobbing, screaming that Ashley was taken into the sky. Sheriff August, not believing in her abduction theory, accuses her of her daughter’s disappearance and removes Ronnie from her custody. Ronnie, though, goes with them willingly, not believing the alien abduction theory either.
Tyler undergoes hypnosis in an attempt to make contact with these beings and reunite with her daughter. Campos and Odusami videotape the session, and once hypnotized, it is revealed that Tyler witnessed the abduction of her daughter and also shows scenes of her own abduction, showing part of the abductors ship and it is hinted that they possibly took some human egg cells from Abbey as well.
The camera scrambles, and Abbey begs the alien that abducted Ashley to return her, the creature replies, saying that Ashley will never be returned and then calls itself the savior, then the father and finally ends with “I am … God”. When the encounter ends Campos and Odusami rush over to the now unconscious Abbey and then they notice something out of camera’s view, the camera scrambles again, and a volatile voice yells “Zimabu Eter!” When the camera unscrambles it shows that all three of them are gone.
The film cuts to an interview with Tyler in which she explains that all three were abducted during that hypnosis session and none has memory of what happened.
The film returns to the aftermath of Abbey’s hypnosis session. She wakes up in a hospital after breaking her neck in the abduction. There, Sheriff August reveals that Will had actually committed suicide, showing that Abbey’s belief that he was murdered was merely a delusion. Later it is shown that Abbey is paralyzed, presumably due to her neck injury.
The film then returns to the present interview, where the Interviewer asks Abbey how they, he and the viewers, can believe her if most of what she thought was only in her mind, Abbey tearfully tells him that she has to believe that Ashley is still alive, the interviewer ends the interview as Abbey breaks down in tears.
Background of the Thriller
In October 2004, filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi had wrapped principal photography on his thriller The Cavern and traveled to North Carolina for postproduction. While there, a chance dinner conversation sparked an interest that would be the genesis of The Fourth Kind.
A colleague told him of a psychologist living in the Carolinas who relocated from a remote town along the Bering Sea. In Alaska, she had conducted a sleep disorder study that revealed terrifying data. What Osunsanmi heard fascinated him…all the more because it was heavily documented. Through his contact, he tracked her down. After some reluctance, she shared her story.
In Fall 2000, the therapist’s patients, under hypnosis, exhibited behaviors that suggested encounters with non humans. Before sleep, every person recalled a white owl outside his or her window. They woke up paralyzed, hearing horrific noises from beyond their doors just before an unknown assailant pulled them screaming from their rooms. Subsequent memories went dark.
As the doctor investigated the phenomenon, she discovered a history of missing people and bizarre activity from the region, dating back to the 1960s. The more she dug, the more she believed the unbelievable: Her patients’ stories were not false memories, but comprehensive evidence of alien abductions.
In February 1965, an Air Force officer and flight crew, en route from Anchorage to Japan, obtained a radar-visual sighting of three enormous objects. The UFOs paced the F-169 freighter aircraft over the Pacific and disappeared at a speed of at least 1,500 mph.
Air Force Lt. Col. Wendelle C. Stevens’ testimonials of gun-camera footage that captured flying saucers over Alaskan airspace and a mid-flight disappearance in 1972 of Alaska’s U.S. State Sen. Nick Begich are but a sampling of the stories of extraterrestrial presence.
In November 1986, in airspace off the coast of Anchorage, Captain Kenju Terauchi and the crew of Japan Airlines Flight 1628 reported a massive extraterrestrial “mother ship” two times the size of an aircraft carrier. Their insistence was backed up by radar returns.
Using never-before-seen archival footage integrated into the film, Osunsanmi exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses. Their accounts of being visited by aliens share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the film.
The Fourth Kind (2009)
Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Starring by: Milla Jovovich, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, Daphne Alexander, Alisha Seaton, Enzo Cilenti, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Raphaël Coleman, Kiera McMaster, Sara Houghton
Screenplay by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Production Design by: Jeremy Conway
Cinematography by: Daniel Pearl
Film Editing by: Ken Blackwell
Costume Design by: Marian Ceo
Art Direction by: John Frick
Music by: Steve Jablonsky
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violent / disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements, brief sexuality.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: November 6, 2009
Visits: 132
