The Fourth Kind is Scary

I don’t recommend going to see The Fourth Kind. The Fourth Kind is just too damn frightening. And you’ll be furious with yourself for ever being scared when afterwards you do the research and discover that none of the “real” footage was real.

Come to think of it, I’ll bet there are already a lot of blogs on the topic of this film’s authenticity. And I’m willing to bet they all say pretty much the same thing. So I’ll spare you an accidental carbon copy of something you can most certainly find elsewhere. Instead, I’ll share with you an account on how scared shitless I was.

What is it about way-too-wide, slack-jawed human mouths that’s so goddamn frightening? Remember The Ring? Remember the girl in the closet, the dead one with the green face and way-too-wide, slack-jawed mouth? What is it about that expression that makes my skin crawl? Could it be the grotesque factor – the idea that a mouth should be stretched to such a misshapen extent? Certainly there is a corporeal gross-out in the equation. But it’s more than that. It’s the idea that the mouth, warped to such a degree, has been so afflicted NOT by the creative use of, say, a car jack, but by the workings of its own muscles. What plane of stanch fear must one be elevated to as to cause such a commanding, mutilating neurological response? What terror is so great as to inspire muscle to betray the innate propensities for self-preservation, to tear flesh and shatter bone? I can’t say. And honestly, neither can the makers of The Fourth Kind. Well, they don’t show it on the screen anyhow. What they do show is the human response to such horrors. And that in itself is plenty to inspire marrow-chilling revulsion in a captive audience.

As I watched this film my stomach was brimming with beer and popcorn and extra-cheese, extra-beef nachos. At the first scare, my stomach began to roll, churning the junk from its spackled walls and keeping it liquid in the tradition of a cement mixer. The second scare arrived, the one where the guy floats like Linda Blair in The Exorcist as his mouth tears to a far-too-large, broken-jawed hole. That’s when the turtle head emerged. It was a very wet turtle head, very threatening. But I clamped that guy off, my sphincter a veritable guillotine, and tight as a submarine airlock. But nothing could prepare me for that final scare. Not with the audio, a guttural and callous recitation of ancient Sumerian, the voice of a thing from Hell. And in its accompaniment were the evil eyes, and the mouth! The way-too-wide, broken-jawed mouth!

That’s when my hole gave up and it was out with the splatters. My date sniffed the air. And then she looked at me all accusingly. Her look of suspicion became one of disgust as she noticed what was rolling down my leg. And then she was gone. Out of there. Ladies and Gentlemen, Jamie has left the building.

I got back to my place and took a shower with every single light on and with my pistol loaded and sitting on the bathroom sink. And then I did my research and discovered the truth behind the “real, clinical footage.” Yeah. None of it is real. It was stunt similar to that of The Blair Witch Project, all manufactured and geared toward hype. But try telling that to me at three in the morning when I’m tossing and turning and losing precious sleep, haunted by the fucking images of the way-too-wide, slack-jawed mouth. That movie has me drinking much more heavily than I normally do.

If your health is important to you, don't see this film. Besides, Halloween is over.