I saw a special midnight screening of this movie last night. Wow, that makes three movies in a row I've seen all at the same theatre ("Paranormal Activity", "21 and a Wakeup", and "The Fourth Kind.")

I actually enjoyed this movie. The film style and approach were pretty unique to me. It was presented somewhat as a documentary--yet simultaneously as a thriller mystery. It was very unorthodox and non-formulaic. I'll see if I can explain without giving too much away.

First of all, the story is about some unexplained happenings in Nome, Alaska in the period of 2000-2002. It follows the story of Dr. Abigail Tyler (played by Milla Jovavich) a psychologist whose husband's mysterious death has been a motivating factor in her continued research and exploration into her clients' strange dreams and episodes of terror. Abigail soon realizes that the collective horrifying events in her clients' lives are a bit too peculiar for coincidence, and suspects something more unexplainable--and unverifiable--is at work.

As the episodes become more violent, Abigail finds her own life enmeshed in this same horror, and soon sees a link between it and her family. With the help of her colleague Abel (played by Elias Koteas), she investigates further and discovers that there is a higher power working the citizens of Nome. An extra-terrestial power.

The movie is based on a true story and the ongoing research by Dr. Abigail Tyler. One of the beautiful aspects of the movie is its film style. Milla Jovavich plays herself as well as Dr. Tyler, introducing herself at the beginning of the film to give the audience the background information surrounding the film they are about to see. She notes that the footage used in the movie is actual archival video and audio footage of the research that the real Abigail used, adding "Be advised, some of this footage may be disturbing."

What the audience doesn't realize is that the footage is shown in tandem with the movie footage. For example, during an interview Abigail is conducting, the movie screen splits and on one side is Milla Jovavich as Abigail conducting the interview at the same time as the actual footage of the real Abigail interviewing her client. There voices are overlayed on top of each others, and the acting is simulcast with the real research footage. If you've ever seen "24" or "Timecode", you are familiar with the split-screen style. It is just new and unusual that the acting goes hand in hand with the reality footage.

This film style made the film less "flat", adding more dimension to the movie. Other devices are used to make the movie a bit more unusual. Whenever a character comes on the screen for the first time by an actor, the credit is given to the actor and usually there is a subtitle stating that the character name is an alias to protect the true-to-life character's privacy. There are certain audio clips that include subtitles so that you can understand what is being said in the scratchy footage, and some of the police footage is absolutely shocking and is also integrated in split-screen style into the movie footage. I really enjoyed this new mode of depiction, and the nice thing was that it wasn't overdone, so it doesn't become annoying to the viewer. The strong point really was this split-screen film style because it seemed to add credibility and validation to the movie acting. Milla's performance seemed to be more convincing when you see Abigail's footage right next to hers.

Because of this film style, it gave the movie a semi-documentary feel from the beginning with Milla's introduction to the end with her and director Olatunde Osunsanmi (who was also the person who interviewed the real Abigail for a Chapman University study, and this footage is also shown). Even the end credits feature miscellaneous audio recordings of different encounters throught the rest of the country over the years, enticing the audience to stay just to satisfy their probably morbid curiosity. The method in which the plot is unfolded builds up on the suspense and mystery, and makes the viewer intrigued as to what is going to happen and is really going on. Because of this, I actually felt that there were more scary points in that movie than there were in "Paranormal Activity" simply because of the unpredictable way that the plot was revealed, as well as the actual footage being shown.

Of course the movie leaves as many unanswered questions as much as it raises new ones, but as Milla and Olatunde say at the end of the film, "What you decide is up to you."

v6,
boNes

'tis the season for gimmicky horror films, it seems
i'll likely check this out, so i skipped a lot of your spoilerish description, but thanks for posting

Hollywood has learned that a lot of these low budget horror films do well at the box office mostly due to the teenage crowd so they keep making them. All of the "Saw" films have had small budgets and of course "Paranormal Activity" has been every studio exec's wet dream.

I*'ve seen commercials for this and I think it looks somewhat fascinating. I read Whitley Strieber's book called 'Communion' where he goes into detail about his alien abductions. He went through this type of therapy. If you let yourself believe it the story was quite horrific, and has stayed with me for almost 20 years. It was well written and picked at a primal fear - to be abducted from within the safety of our home.

Now this movie comes out, and I admit I'm intrigued. Sadly most of the reviews I've read pan it (from IMDB).

Seems from your discription bones, they have used an interesting editing style to capture the essense of the film. Maybe a matinee.

Thanks for the review. Despite the previous reviews my interest is rekindled.