Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 11/10/09 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: MCT Campus Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler. a psychologist who believes that some of her patients have had encounters of the fourth kind.

According to scientist J. Allen Hyneck, there are different levels of encounters related to alien observation or activity. An encounter of the first kind deals with the sighting of an unidentified flying object. An encounter of the second kind involves the sighting of and physical effects of a UFO. An encounter of the third kind refers to the observation of "animate beings" associated with UFOs.

Now, encounters of the fourth kind are the creepy ones you'd probably want to worry about. Those are the white light, slightly blurred, drag-you-off-in-a-spaceship-and-slice-you-open encounters. That's right, fourth encounters deal specifically with human abductions by UFOs or their inhabitants.

Naturally, "Fourth Kind" focuses exactly on this subject matter. The film follows the experiences of Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler, played by Milla Jovovich, a psychologist who notices a pattern emerging from the stories of a number of her patients in Nome, Alaska. Tyler, who is in a bit of a fragile state due to her husband's recent "murder", which she cannot fully remember, begins to put her patients under hypnosis so that they can better explain their experiences to her.

It is during these moments of hypnosis, all caught on video, that Tyler begins to believe that her patients all have had encounters of the fourth kind. Throw in a sinister dead language, multiple suicides, and disturbing footage of seemingly possessed patients, and you'll have a pretty good sense of what "Fourth Kind" aims at addressing.

The actual way the footage is presented is one of the highlights of the film. Often the footage of Jovovich portraying Tyler was shown split-screen with the actual Dr. Tyler, hammering down the fact that the film was based on actual events. The two Tylers, or their patients, reciting the same lines as both the real and recreated interviews filled the screen.

Offering the footage in this way proved to have a successful effect; the actors portraying the characters were often quoting them word for word. The recreations of possession under hypnosis seemed accurate and this made for a more believable plot line.

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