Found footage is one of the most versatile subgenres around. Throw a handheld camera or a GoPro onto someone walking through creepy woods? Boom. Found footage. Have some security cameras set up in an abandoned insane asylum with a group of intrepid investigators running from a jawless neon-green ghost creature? Boom. Found footage! The branching tree of subgenres within the found footage subgenre runs deep. One of my personal favorite sects of found footage, and this is controversial, is the mockumentary. Some found footage die-hards don’t acknowledge mockumentary as a subsect of found footage, but I don’t listen to naysayers.
The Fourth Kind is ‘based on a true story’, which takes place in Nome, Alaska. The story is set through a series of interviews with Chapman University. Doctor Abigail Emily Tyler (Charlotte Milchard) is interviewed by an unnamed interviewer (Olatunde Osunsanmi), who is trying to learn more about a harrowing abduction experience she had. As the audience, you are constantly told, “What you believe is yours to decide.” From here, the story is told through dramatic re-enactments of Dr. Abbey Tyler’s (Milla Jovovich) experiences, and it’s a doozy. Dr. Tyler attempts to put some of her patients through a regressive form of hypnotherapy, which ends up going south in more ways than one. Once her patients start to experience adverse side effects, she finds herself being chased by Johnny Law and an unseen group of Non-Human Intelligence. Can Dr. Tyler survive with her sanity intact?
One of the biggest, and most understandable, points of criticism toward The Fourth Kind is how hard writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi goes regarding the film’s authenticity. Many aspects make this film a great piece of gateway horror, but this might not be one of them. The one piece of truth surrounding The Fourth Kind is how some of the stories are vaguely based on real disappearances and occurrences in Nome, Alaska. This is problematic for a few reasons. Recently The Alaska Triangle has come into the zeitgeist when it comes to discussing Ufology and is widely considered one of the most compelling documentations of legitimate UFO/UAP sightings. Alaska is also one of the states with the highest rate of domestic violence crimes. Some of the ideas portrayed in The Fourth Kind do feel in pretty bad taste. It’s clear why the residents of Nome, Alaska, and Alaska in general, aren’t too fond of this movie.
That said, The Fourth Kind is incredibly compelling as a mockumentary and gets the formula right for an aughts true crime piece. Even though the audience is forced to accept the idea of UFOs/UAPs, as the film is told from Dr. Tyler’s perspective, at its core, it’s a true crime mockumentary. It doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to storytelling, but as a mockumentary, it’s incredibly entertaining. Something like The Fourth Kind is an excellent primer for films like Digging Up the Marrow, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Lake Mungo, and Horror in the High Desert. The Fourth Kind sets the stage for how films like this can flow perfectly while still not falling into too many mockumentary tropes or cliches.
The Fourth Kind continuously cuts to ‘real’ footage and succeeds at feeling authentic, though knowing the truth about Alaska does make some parts feel distasteful. Telling this film through the singular perspective of Dr. Tyler is risky, but the film is better off for it. Honestly, the weirdest part of the film is when Milla Jovovich confronts the camera, as herself, and says, to an extent, everything you’re about to see is entirely accurate. They triple down on this when Jovovich and Olatunde Osunsanmi address the camera directly at the end of the film as well. While it’s not the greatest mockumentary ever made, it feels fresh and original. It sets the stage for the depths mockumentaries can go and is incredibly compelling for it.
