This is a guest post by Ryan who works as an internet marketer for a company that sells bathroom suites, he loves watching thriller and horror movies so he thought he would put down his thoughts on the recent DVD release of The Fourth Kind.
I sat down at the weekend to watch this film and if I am being totally honest I had no idea what to expect at all. It was very lucky that I was with my girlfriend because the film was one of the scariest movies that I had ever seen in my life.
The film follows an ongoing unsolved mystery in Alaska where one town has seen a very large number of unexplained disappearances during the past 40 years. Now to an outsider this doesn’t seem that different to any other thriller movie but that is until Mila Jovovich walks onto the screen at the very start and tells us that this movie is based on real events and that we can believe what we want.
As you start to watch the movie you see what they call “real footage” of abductions, possessions by aliens and all kinds of strange things and by the end of the movie I was not only petrified that I was going to be abducted by aliens in the not too distant future but I believed everything I had seen in the movie.
I am not a gullible person but the story was said to have been based on true events and they had interviewed the woman involved in the event (Jovovich was portraying this character) and she was sitting there looking very thin and in a wheelchair, crying her eyes out the entire time.
(SPOILER ALERT)
It is actually only today that I found out that the entire movie is a lie. The footage from the early 2000’s was all staged by the studio and residents of the town have not even heard of a doctor going by the name of Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler which means that the kidnapping of people, and more importantly the disappearance of her little girl which I thought was real, is all fake.
There are many movies that pull off reality whilst letting the watcher know at the end that it isn’t real such as the Blair Witch Project and of course the more recent Paranormal Activity (which I also recently sat down to watch) but this movie does not tell you that it is all fiction it merely suggests that it is your choice on what you believe. This has actually led me on to believe that film producers should not be allowed to lie to the viewers unless they state either at the beginning or preferably the end, that it is fake.
Before finding this information out I was giving this movie a 4/5 but after knowing that studio lied I will give it a very low 1/5.
When you see a film that mentions that it is based on “real events” or in this case “real case studies” it is important that this means they could be based on the smallest of pieces of true information, in this case the town did receive FBI visits but it looks like that is as far as the facts go.
What do you think about studios telling tall tales to the viewers without letting them know before they leave the cinema that it is a fake?
Picture Source- Wikipedia
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Tags: Blair Witch Project, DVD Movie Review, Mila Jovovich, Paranormal Activity, The Fourth Kind
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The Fourth Kind – DVD Review…
Find out what guest blogger Ryan thought of the movie The Fourth Kind with this very informative DVD review….
Twitter: money_whisper
says:
Thank you for your review. I was planning to watch this movie knowing that is based on real events but after reading your post I think is just another movie I will not see. The fact that you know that a movie like is based on real events it gives you the creeps, but to find out it is only a lie is just dissapointing.
I almost bought this movie last week. I was tempted by the “based on actual events.” I’m glad I know better now, although, any movie with Milla Jovovich can’t be too terrible.
That does seem like a little bit of a scam trick and an example of how Viral Marketing can go wrong. I think if the story can not stand on its own, without having to manufacture some “real history” to draw the audience in, it says a lot about the movie and its creators.
As John Says, a lot of the creep factor comes from knowing the story is somewhat “true,” so a film capitalizing on this really does seem like dirty pool.
.-= SteveH@Lift Recliners is hoping you stop by and read Arthritis Explained =-.
Twitter: kajanova
says:
Totally agree with you. This movie’s quality rested solely on the belief that what we were watching was ‘real’. When you find out the footage was all faked, suddenly the movie is terrible. I myself was dooped into believing that the footage was real, until I did some research late at night after viewing (believing I might be abducted or something lol) and found out the whole thing was a scam. This pissed me off because they blatantly lie at the very beginning by claiming with that subtitle, “this movie is based on actual events”. How am I ever supposed to take a ‘based on true events’ movie seriously ever again after this? And from what I hear, they are still trying to convince people that the footage is real. Decietful and shameful, that it is. Freaking hollywood.
.-= Kaja is hoping you stop by and read Spartacus: Blood and Sand Review =-.
Twitter: ryanogs
says:
This is exactly what I did, I was outraged that the studio were pretty much allowed to get away with telling lies to the viewer, if you take out the realism of the film then it is a pretty poor film really.
The only fact I remembered was the FBI visiting that small city around 2,000 times. If this is a fact then you have to assume something was going on. Who knows what was really happening though. I saw it in the theater and wanted to leave. Even though I give this movie a 0/1 gillion, it’s better than Paranormal Activity.
.-= Anthony @ Innovatively Simple is hoping you stop by and read Things I’d Rather Do #1 =-.
It’s frustrating to know that the movie you were watching isn’t really real. You were given a belief from the start that it was based on facts but eventually it is all made up. This movies are only in for a few days but after that they all plunk down. Good thing that I was able to read this because I’m curious about this movie. Now my curiosity worn off.
Adgitize
.-= Yashiro is hoping you stop by and read How to Cash Out Your Online Earnings? =-.