KyleYadlosky’s review published on Letterboxd:
Aliens abduct you and perform excruciating expirements on you every night!! You can't remember, because they force you to forget, and if you ever did remember you would immediately go home and kill yourself!! Oh no!!!
The Fourth Kind does not get the love it deserves from the found footage folks. It's such an engrossing experiment blending every bit of ancient aliens conspiracy theory shit together into a hybrid found footage/Hollywood adaptation horror that swings for the fences and holds nothing back!! Wrap all that in a weirdly sincere PSA frame, and you got yourself the gold standard in alien obsessive filmmaking!!
Milla Jovovich is the perfect lead as you immediately believe that she believes everything she's saying. Will Patton is a blast, just growling and chewing every scene apart!! The use of split screen between the glossy and intentionally cheesy dramatization and the more naturalistic archival footage is really effective! Having Jovovich made up and moodily lit on one side, and having Charlotte Milchard on the other looking as if the crew's going to wheel her straight from her interview into the nearest morgue is so striking and can make it hard to remember that both are fakes!! The multiple moving screens also give you more to see, hear, and process, and the overstimulation has its own reality-muddling impact. If you're looking for an alien conspiracy gooning compilation that will steal your senses and leave you fastened to the screen then look no further!!!
Anyway, this movie's lived inside my head since I first saw it, and now I'm happy to reassert that this is a full-on banger and one of the most effective uses of found footage I've ever seen! I want to believe but also really don't want to believe, because it sounds scary as hell!! No thank you!!!
KyleYadlosky liked these reviews
All
' ].join(''); if ( adsScript && adsScript === 'bandsintown' && adsPlatforms && ((window.isIOS && adsPlatforms.indexOf("iOS") >= 0) || (window.isAndroid && adsPlatforms.indexOf("Android") >= 0)) && adsLocations && adsMode && ( (adsMode === 'include' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) >= 0) || (adsMode === 'exclude' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) == -1) ) ) { var opts = { artist: "", song: "", adunit_id: 100005950, div_id: "cf_async_be93a289-ee26-4890-a86e-00657692647f" }; adUnit.id = opts.div_id; if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)}; } else { adUnit.id = 'pw-be93a289-ee26-4890-a86e-00657692647f'; adUnit.className = 'pw-div -tile300x250 -alignleft -bottommargin'; adUnit.setAttribute('data-pw-' + (renderMobile ? 'mobi' : 'desk'), 'med_rect_btf'); if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => { adUnit.insertAdjacentHTML('afterend', kicker); window.ramp.que.push(function () { window.ramp.addTag('pw-be93a289-ee26-4890-a86e-00657692647f'); }); }, { once: true }); } } tag.remove(); })(document.getElementById('script-be93a289-ee26-4890-a86e-00657692647f'));
' ].join(''); if ( adsScript && adsScript === 'bandsintown' && adsPlatforms && ((window.isIOS && adsPlatforms.indexOf("iOS") >= 0) || (window.isAndroid && adsPlatforms.indexOf("Android") >= 0)) && adsLocations && adsMode && ( (adsMode === 'include' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) >= 0) || (adsMode === 'exclude' && adsLocations.indexOf(window.adsLocation) == -1) ) ) { var opts = { artist: "", song: "", adunit_id: 100005950, div_id: "cf_async_0e140d19-8174-4f23-bcc6-ac750b48926e" }; adUnit.id = opts.div_id; if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } var c=function(){cf.showAsyncAd(opts)};if(typeof window.cf !== 'undefined')c();else{cf_async=!0;var r=document.createElement("script"),s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.async=!0;r.src="//srv.tunefindforfans.com/fruits/apricots.js";r.readyState?r.onreadystatechange=function(){if("loaded"==r.readyState||"complete"==r.readyState)r.onreadystatechange=null,c()}:r.onload=c;s.parentNode.insertBefore(r,s)}; } else { adUnit.id = 'pw-0e140d19-8174-4f23-bcc6-ac750b48926e'; adUnit.className = 'pw-div'; adUnit.setAttribute('data-pw-' + (renderMobile ? 'mobi' : 'desk'), 'sky_btf'); if (target) { target.insertAdjacentElement('beforeend', adUnit); } else { tag.insertAdjacentElement('afterend', adUnit); } window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => { adUnit.insertAdjacentHTML('afterend', kicker); window.ramp.que.push(function () { window.ramp.addTag('pw-0e140d19-8174-4f23-bcc6-ac750b48926e'); }); }, { once: true }); } } tag.remove(); })(document.getElementById('script-0e140d19-8174-4f23-bcc6-ac750b48926e'));
