Wall To Wall

Conditions: Shaken to the bone.


Dark Days

Hearts and thoughts go out to the Japanese and the Kiwis struggling in the aftermath of Earth's destructive fury. Hang in there.



Film Review: The Fourth Kind.

The Fourth Kind is decidedly not your average kind of thriller. Your first clue comes right at the start where the lead actress comes out and tells you that this isn't your average kind of thriller, that it's based on real events. The second clue comes around the point where the screen splits in two and the exact same scene is played out on both the left and the right hand side. The difference is that on the one side are the actors in the film, and on the other side is apparently the actual footage that was taken when it actually happened. This is a new idea, to me at least, and at first I found it distracting. But when the film kicks into gear you quickly realise why they have done it in this way, because frankly if they had not then the default reaction to what we see is to totally disbelieve it.

Easily one of the most scary films I have ever seen, the Fourth Kind is a thriller based on a true story about a small, quiet remote town in Alaska where it turns out the residents are getting abducted by aliens, who then don't do quite as good a job erasing memories of the abduction as one would have hoped. I feel odd calling it a film, though. It has actors, and it certainly is dramatic, but it really comes across as more of a documentary than anything else. Which only serves to make it way more frightening than if it had been shot as a straight-up film. There isn't really an ending, either, no way of finishing the story. Milla Jovovich plays Dr Abbey, a psychiatrist who's husband has been recently murdered. On top of that, suddenly her patients are telling her they can't sleep at night, that they're getting woken up at three in the morning by an owl. An owl outside the window, an owl that is then inside the house, an owl that is standing over them. And then it's not an owl.

One guy saying this can get laughed off, but three? To get to the bottom of it, Abbey puts one of these guys under hypnosis to relive the event. And basically that is where the shit hits the fan. The film rapidly escalates into a genuinely frightening investigation of who, or more appropriately what, is causing these perceived visitations. And the more they dig into this, principally using hypnosis to uncover the memories of what happened, the more violent and dangerous the reactions become. Abby ends up confronting her own demons, along with the entities who have terrorized the town. and the cost is terrible. I've always admired films that can scare you with ideas instead of resorting to blood and torture and cheap jumps, and this film is worthy of respect for how well it works.

However, there is a second part to this movie, and it begins once the credits roll, because some genuine questions have been raised, not least directly by the cast themselves who return at the end to tell you how real it all is, and to decide for yourself. Living as we do in the age of the Internet, it is not difficult to go online and start asking questions about this film, and to see what others had to say about it. Which is when you discover that the entire film is a total lie. Turns out nothing, no part of it was actually real and that the split screen stuff was just different actors and a more shaky 'realistic' camera. Reactions to this, as you can imagine, have been mostly scornful, which is likely a response people have after being scared. Like being angry at a flapping curtain you thought was a ghost. But apart from that, you have to give some credit to the director who has taken a somewhat scary idea and ramped up to 11 by fully playing up the whole "based on true event's" idea that other films have tried to use. All I know is, I was totally convinced at the time, and while disappointed to find out it wasn't real after all, I think I'm also a bit glad as well. Four Sumerian Gods out of Five.


- Peace out (if at all possible)