Today's Article - The Fourth Kind

This article is for quizzes on Thursday October 27th...

The Fourth Kind is a 2009 American science fiction horror film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, starring Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Corey Johnson, Will Patton, Charlotte Milchard, and Mia Mckenna-Bruce. The title is derived from the expansion of J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind denotes alien abductions.

The film purports to be based on real events occurring in Nome, Alaska in 2000, in which psychologist Dr. Abigail Emily "Abbey" Tyler uses hypnosis to uncover memories from her patients of alien abduction, and finds evidence suggesting that she may have been abducted as well. The film has two components: dramatization, in which professional actors portray the individuals involved, and video footage purporting to show the 'actual' victims undergoing hypnosis. (At some points in the film, the "actual" and dramatized footage is presented alongside each other in split-screen.) Throughout the film, Abbey is shown being interviewed on television in 2002, two years after the abductions occurred.

The film, which was largely panned by critics, made US$47.71 million in cinemas worldwide.

To promote the film, Universal Pictures created a website with fake news stories supposedly taken from real Alaska newspapers, including the Nome Nugget and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The newspapers sued Universal, eventually reaching a settlement where Universal would remove the fake stories and pay $20,000 to the Alaska Press Club and a $2,500 contribution to a scholarship fund for the Calista Corporation.