The 4th Kind
They were talking about this movie on the radio this morning, many people were billing it as the scariest movie of all time.
That is a bold statement to make, similar to the ones listeners had made about Paranormal Activity recently. As with all forms of advertising, it went too far.
Apparently, encounters of the 1st kind involve a sighting of a UFO. The 2nd kind, evidence such as crop circles or the like, and the 3rd kind is actual contact. However the 4th kind involves abduction.
The film is based upon the research of a psychologist looking into odd sleeping patterns of residents of Nome, Alaska. She had started the work with her husbad, who we find out was murdered in her sleep. Her patients (names have been changed) all report seeing an owl in their sleep, and when she hypnotises one of them, it turns out that the owl isn't real and the subject completely freaks out. The film contains a mixture of 'real' footage mixed with acted scenes, so we get to see how the original patient reacted here. He never says exactly what her saw, but that night he goes home and commits a murder/suicide with the rest of his family (again, there is 'real' footage of this from the police showdown).
Our psychologist believes it has something to do with aliens, but her colleague doesn't believe her. They hypnotise another patient, who reacts in a similar manner (he freaks out at his dream). Right after that, they discover a recording of her notes that apparently also contains a recording of her being abducted, and somebody speaking Sumarian, the oldest language on Earth.
Everything kind of falls apart after this. The second hypnosis patient has an episode, they go to investigate, and he levitates off the bed before he has his neck and back broken and dies. This is actually filmed, but severely distorted. She is suspected of killing him. Her house is put under police surveillance, during which time her daughter goes 'missing' in an apparent abduction by aliens, which is witnessed by a police officer, again with a distorted video.
As a last resort, they hypnotise her. This doesn't work out so well. She does some levitating of her own, and starts babbling about 'god' in Sumarian, then the three people in the room get abducted and returned. We cut to well after this, when she is recovering from her injuries. It turns out her husband actually killed himself right next to her, she blanked out the memory of that, which devastates her. As for the rest, well that's all up in the air.
It's supposed to be based on real events, but I found it quite hard to believe. I also did not find it scary. I admit, there were two points that made me jump, but that was more the wham! of something happening suddenly rather than the event itself. It also, IMO, does little to further the idea of alien abduction. I believes this woman believes this is what happened, but i also believe she's suffering from psychosis. The only part that can't be explained away is what happened to her daughter. The house was under surveillance at the time, if she'd killed the girl, she'd have had to have done it in the house, which would've been hard to cover up. So unless there is a secret trap door in the house, she seemingly vanished.
Maybe i expected too much from this movie. It certainly held my interest for the entire time, I just didn't find it particularly believable. I'm sure there will be plenty of people who do, but this film did zero to convince me.
That is a bold statement to make, similar to the ones listeners had made about Paranormal Activity recently. As with all forms of advertising, it went too far.
Apparently, encounters of the 1st kind involve a sighting of a UFO. The 2nd kind, evidence such as crop circles or the like, and the 3rd kind is actual contact. However the 4th kind involves abduction.
The film is based upon the research of a psychologist looking into odd sleeping patterns of residents of Nome, Alaska. She had started the work with her husbad, who we find out was murdered in her sleep. Her patients (names have been changed) all report seeing an owl in their sleep, and when she hypnotises one of them, it turns out that the owl isn't real and the subject completely freaks out. The film contains a mixture of 'real' footage mixed with acted scenes, so we get to see how the original patient reacted here. He never says exactly what her saw, but that night he goes home and commits a murder/suicide with the rest of his family (again, there is 'real' footage of this from the police showdown).
Our psychologist believes it has something to do with aliens, but her colleague doesn't believe her. They hypnotise another patient, who reacts in a similar manner (he freaks out at his dream). Right after that, they discover a recording of her notes that apparently also contains a recording of her being abducted, and somebody speaking Sumarian, the oldest language on Earth.
Everything kind of falls apart after this. The second hypnosis patient has an episode, they go to investigate, and he levitates off the bed before he has his neck and back broken and dies. This is actually filmed, but severely distorted. She is suspected of killing him. Her house is put under police surveillance, during which time her daughter goes 'missing' in an apparent abduction by aliens, which is witnessed by a police officer, again with a distorted video.
As a last resort, they hypnotise her. This doesn't work out so well. She does some levitating of her own, and starts babbling about 'god' in Sumarian, then the three people in the room get abducted and returned. We cut to well after this, when she is recovering from her injuries. It turns out her husband actually killed himself right next to her, she blanked out the memory of that, which devastates her. As for the rest, well that's all up in the air.
It's supposed to be based on real events, but I found it quite hard to believe. I also did not find it scary. I admit, there were two points that made me jump, but that was more the wham! of something happening suddenly rather than the event itself. It also, IMO, does little to further the idea of alien abduction. I believes this woman believes this is what happened, but i also believe she's suffering from psychosis. The only part that can't be explained away is what happened to her daughter. The house was under surveillance at the time, if she'd killed the girl, she'd have had to have done it in the house, which would've been hard to cover up. So unless there is a secret trap door in the house, she seemingly vanished.
Maybe i expected too much from this movie. It certainly held my interest for the entire time, I just didn't find it particularly believable. I'm sure there will be plenty of people who do, but this film did zero to convince me.