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Movie Review: “The Fourth Kind” – Pulling the strings of the abduction phenomenon

Researchers who frequently lecture at UFO conferences often experience moments when they can feel intense eye-to-eye contact with various people. They stare at you incessantly, seemingly in quest of important answers. Personally, I have felt it many times. After the lecture, you might see a man and wife approaching the stage, and you quickly realize they were the ones gazing at you just moments ago.

“Mr. Baiata, can you give us a moment please?”

“Sure, how can I help?”

“Well, we don’t know. Maybe you can help. We are concerned about the strange dreams our son Tommy is having. He is four years old, and he dreams that he goes out to play with his friend in our backyard, and that his friend is a cute, white rabbit.”

“Oh, I see, they play, and what else?”

“The rabbit is kind of funny. He has big, black eyes and talks to our son gently, and our kid is so happy… he has no other friends to play with… But we don’t believe that his little friend is a rabbit at all, or that Tommy is dreaming, because in the morning, Tommy’s slippers are dirty with mud. Are they taking him? Where are they bringing him? Can we stop them?”

As we know, it’s tough to provide all the answers. And if you happen to be looking for answers about the abduction phenomenon, you surely should not expect too much from the new abduction thriller “The Fourth Kind.” Olatunde Osunsanmi’s movie is based on real-life experiences of alleged abductees, yet it provides poor insight into the phenomenon.

4th Kind
Image Credit: Universal Studios

Just as in the abduction literature, the Grays utilize their typical strategy to enter the mind of their chosen subjects and click into their time/space reality in an unnoticeable way. They induce images and situations familiar to that person, often including the appearance of animals. In this case, the “victims” saw visions of owls instead of Tommy’s rabbits.

A second pattern emerged, which was one of the few intriguing points of this faux docudrama. For the first time ever (documentaries included), the psychologist/therapist who is leading the hypnotic regression sessions is an abductee also – an equal in the experiences of her patients. But in terms of piquing the viewer’s interest, that’s it.

The plot of “The Fourth Kind” was apparently conceived on real abduction stories. In reality, since many abductees are isolated in their lives and striving for clues, in their quest they end up in the wrong human hands and they can face worse treatments than what the aliens perform on them. By the mass, and in this movie, actual abductees are still viewed as emotionally unstable and deserving of banishment to horrible places such as jail (since they are liars and a criminals), asylums (because they are so mentally distraught they must be removed from “normal” society), or the exorcism room (because the church’s priests must expel the demons).  In Mr. Osunsanmi’s work, the apparent effort to relate to these episodes is evident, but he is telling only one part of the story – that the aliens are mean and malevolent.

4th Kind Mila
Image Credit: Universal Studios

This is all too bad, because Milla Jovovich does a superlative job in her role as the psychologist who is forced to cope with the terrifying abduction reality. One last note: this movie is not a “reenactment.” It is mere fiction of The Fourth Kind.

Maurizio Baiata

Maurizio is an investigative reporter, magazine editor and UFO researcher He started his journalistic activity in the late Sixties as a free lance journalist and then editor of several Rock Italian magazines, reaching the peak of his career as Editor in chief of "Rolling Stone" magazine’s Italian edition. In 1981 he moved to New York working as radio correspondent for the Italian state network RAI and then becoming editor-cultural page of the daily newspaper “Il Progresso Italo Americano”. Seven years later Baiata moved back to Italy and concentrated on UFO research, focusing on the Roswell incident. He produced many documentaries with large diffusion through all media and released the Autopsy Footage in 1995. In 1997 he published two books of the late Col. Philip Corso, “The Day After Roswell” and “Dawn of a New Age” (Corso’s original diary never published elsewhere). In Italy Baiata directed “Notiziario UFO", "UFO Network", “Dossier Alieni”, "Stargate"”Area 51” and “X Times” and two multimedia encyclopedias: “UFO Dossier X” and "Stargate - Enigmi dal Cosmo". He has presented at numerous lectures worldwide, including two appearances at the International UFO Congress in Laughlin.

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