No replies to this topic

[Admin]

The trailer for the spooky alien abduction thriller “The Fourth Kind” (above), which hits theaters Nov. 6, bears an immediate stamp of authenticity: a straight-faced Milla Jovovich walks toward the camera while identifying herself as the actress portraying Dr. Abigail Tyler, the movie’s heroine. In subsequent quick-cut scenes, some of which look like home video footage, Jovovich interrogates terrified patients, all of whom recount similarly foreboding extraterrestrial encounters. At least one person appears to lapse into ancient Sumerian during hypnosis, and an expert talks about millennia-old hieroglyphics containing images of astronauts.

“This is a dramatization of events that occurred in Oct. 2000,” Jovovich intones. “Every scene in this movie is supported by archive footage.”

But is it?

The movie revolves around a series of real-life disappearances that took place in Nome, Alaska — caused, as the film suggests, by aliens. But as local newspapers have pointed out, the FBI ruled the disappearances were due to excessive alcohol consumption and the harsh winters. There’s a bio of Dr. Abigail Tyler on the Web, mentioning an article she published in the June 1997 issue of the American Journal Psychiatry. But neither Tyler’s employer nor her alma mater is listed, the journal’s name is rendered incorrectly (it’s American Journal of Psychiatry) and a colleague mentioned in the bio, Dr. Samuel Burden, M.D., appears only in association with references to “The Fourth Kind” if searched for on-line.

Universal, the movie’s distributor, seems to be borrowing a page from the marketing tactics of “The Blair Witch Project” — and, more recently, “Paranormal Activity” — two movies that had a documentary style. Part of the fun of those films was based on the fact that they seemed real. (Both “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity” were fiction.) Of course, how real-sounding is a subplot about alien abductions, anyway? Universal declined to comment for this piece.

Source