The horror genre has never been shy in jumping on a bandwagon, because if a certain style or trend worked for one movie, then there’s no reason why it won’t work for countless others.
We’ve seen it happen when every major franchise under the sun was given a remake or reboot, never mind the dozens of Stephen King adaptations entering development after It and the sequel hauled in over a billion dollars, the so-called ‘elevated horror’ fad that treats the material with the utmost seriousness and dramatic heft, and of course found footage.
The Blair Witch Project gave rise to an entire subgenre that presented itself as authentic and documentarian in style, and while it did yield some solid titles, the majority of them are forgettable dreck. That definitely applies to The Fourth Kind, which was panned by critics when it first landed in November 2009.
Star Milla Jovovich did win some praise for her performance, though, with her psychiatrist Dr. Abigail Tyler attempting to solve a series of missing persons cases dating back decades after discovering that extraterrestrial activity may be afoot.
The meta twist sees Jovovich as an actress playing Dr. Tyler, a character actually played by Charlotte Milchard within the ‘real-life’ context of the story. It’s ambitious, but it doesn’t work, although you can find that out for yourself now The Fourth Kind is streaming on Netflix.
