jakeweisman’s review published on Letterboxd:
This was probably my 30th viewing of this for reasons I’ll soon explain. This movie was my childhood trauma. At 12 years old I saw the trailer for this before my first horror movie in theaters Paranormal Activity. Already having a strong phobia of aliens, I was in complete shock. “REAL FOOTAGE” is what the trailer repeated as blood curdling screams blared through the theater speakers. I immediately started having night terrors, and I hadn’t even seen the movie yet.
Fast forward to when this came out for rental and I was first in line. Time to face my fear of the horrifying trailer that was giving me sleepless nights.
So I got Girot with me we popped this baby in and laughed the whole way through! Right? Right?!
I was mentally hysterical. This started a long grueling year of sleepless nights, extreme anxiety, but I kept going back. I showed everyone this movie. Almost like my goal was to hopefully have them watch it, tell me it was stupid, and comfort my thoughts. Instead, what I was doing was passing the terror around to a bunch of 12 year olds that would have the same reaction as myself.
Soon my mom was getting phone calls from my friends’ moms who had I shown the movie to.
They were telling her their kids want to sleep with them now. They have anxiety about going missing, being abducted, and were crying every night before bed.
I’m not sure when or how exactly I conquered this fear but it lingered for years. Even today if I see the time is “3:33AM” I hold my breath. This is the only piece of film to ever do something like this to me. I know this sounds crazy, but I have tried to find something just as or more terrifying, and a few films have came close, but none have surpassed The Fourth Kind.
People can write this off and be a Wikipedia warrior “it’s all fake!” “They say it’s real and it’s all fake!!” Of course it’s fake dumb fuck every movie is fake. I think if you want the full experience of a “real found footage” film convince yourself what you’re seeing is real for the run time. I think it is the closest you will get from a film to true horror.
jakeweisman liked this review
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