The Fourth Kind

The Fourth Kind is kind of lame. There are parts of that are genuinely creepy, but the action never quite seems to get off the ground.

The story bounces between what is supposedly ‘actual’ footage of interviews and reenactments of interviews, sometimes showing them at the same time, side by side. Doing so builds the tension, which I guess is the point, but it’s still kind of annoying.

A good portion of the movie is spent on people freaking out about what happened to them in the recent past. You are watching people being scared of things that happened to them previously, rather than actually seeing scary things, if that makes sense.

The Fourth Kind reminds me kind of that old writing advice that says show don't tell. This basically means give the reader an experience rather than just spelling out how they should feel. The Fourth Kind did a lot of telling and not a lot of showing.

Other annoying things about the movie: the uber pale makeup of the ‘real’ doctor doing interviews, the whiney voice of the ‘real’ doctor, and the sheriff's unrealistic temper tantrums.

Bottom line – the movie is slow and there’s no real payoff.