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The complete lack of ideas (or necessary evolutionary form?) that has been raging in cinema in recent years has contributed to an upheaval of classic patterns, at least in the storytelling form of stories, and to the search for more suitable techniques to transform incredibly banal and clichéd plots into box office hits. Of course, many years have passed since the release of The Blair Witch Project, and the mockumentary genre no longer produces the desired effects, so there is an attempt to manipulate and squeeze it further to see what can come out of it.
Those who produce this type of film know that in reality, scenic fiction must be accompanied by a sort of "fiction within fiction," that is, a self-convincing effort to make the viewer truly believe that the narration of the facts is not "based on a true story" but is "the true story," that the images are not the result of cinematic art but are archival footage made available to the viewer, who becomes a fortunate witness to a truly "historic" document. Today, this works only partially and over time this technique has become a convenient excuse to bring stories to the screen that involve almost zero narrative effort, yet are made interesting by the clever method mentioned. It is somewhat sad, in fact, to think that if a random Paranormal Activity had been shot as a "real" film, it would have attracted half the audience (we would have missed the good old Poltergeist), because shooting a "mockumentary" seems like a very convenient escape hidden behind the pretext of a brilliant idea.
So, as I said, the technique evolves: a true story is taken, documented by footage and testimonies, and is performed by real and known actors. But during the course of the film, in parallel (literally in the sense of a split screen), the director shows us the supposed real documents with the real protagonists of the narrated events. The viewer is thus more puzzled... "it's not all a hoax like Cloverfield... this stuff must be true," especially since at the beginning of the film there is the lead actress who explains, speaking directly to the viewer, that what will be shown is not only the result of the screenwriters' imagination.
If "The Fourth Kind" were watched without this nasty feeling of being fooled, it would undoubtedly make a better impression, also because besides respecting all the modern criteria of horror, it touches on serious topics that go beyond the endless question of whether we are alone in this universe, and which (perhaps too pretentiously) give the impression of watching a film that does not just deal with alien abductions.
The story takes place in the city of Nome in Alaska, and Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychiatrist, hypnotizes several residents of the town in order to delve into their psyche and discover the origin of their nocturnal disturbances. The obvious solutions she promptly arrives at overlap with the doctor's personal nightmares, who in a spiral of terror will find an explanation for personal griefs and tragedies.
It would not be correct to say that this film has no effect, because some sequences are indeed very impactful and, in light of what has been said so far, are not necessarily pointless. The cinematography is very well-crafted, and the desolate and beautiful landscapes of Alaska undoubtedly add value to the rising tension in the vision of the film. However, even if positive elements can be found, at least on the technical side, the crucial problem remains the same. Why was it necessary to shoot it this way? Would it have been so scary even without the forced viewing of the supposed real documents? These questions are, of course, easy to answer, but when you go home and surf the internet to do research and understand how much you were fooled, you are stunned to discover that Dr. Abigail Tyler really exists (complete with a Facebook profile), indeed in not particularly good health conditions, that the city of Nome has indeed been a center of strange events from the 1960s to today, and much more.
For me, anything that piques interest and sparks discussion is welcome, always provided that one is stimulated by intelligent topics and that that smell of "hoax" stays as far away as possible... for this reason, I feel that this experiment has succeeded only in part.
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