Septicos contra "The Four Kind"

The Fourth Kind is, in so many ways, a really awful film. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and released in the UK over the weekend, it purports to be a dramatic reconstruction of events that took place in the city of Nome, Alaska, involving the disappearance of local residents. If you were to accept this film at face value, you would be left in no doubt whatsoever that these disappearances were the result of "close encounters of the fourth kind" – abduction by aliens.

The film employs several far-from-subtle techniques in an attempt to convince viewers that what they are watching is based entirely upon documented evidence. Both the trailer and the film itself open with an assurance to that effect, direct to camera, from the film's star:

"I am actress Milla Jovovich and I will be portraying Dr Abigail Tyler. This film is a dramatisation of events that occurred October 2000. Every scene in this movie is supported by archive footage. Some of what you are about to see is extremely disturbing."

At least the latter statement is accurate, although not for the reasons intended by the filmmakers.

Both trailer and film frequently cut between allegedly real footage of hypnotic regression sessions carried out by psychologist Dr Tyler on her patients and dramatic reconstructions of these same sessions, sometimes employing a split-screen technique to show both simultaneously to "prove" that the reconstructions are 100% accurate. This approach seems to have backfired badly on the filmmakers as most reviews of the film are highly critical of this unconvincing "archive footage".

The reason I found this film so "disturbing" was because experience shows that no matter how obvious a hoax may be to those capable of critical thinking, there will always be many who will accept at face value the film's claim to be based on true events. What I found really worrying was that, even though the "case histories" featured in the film were almost certainly fictional, the accounts would not have looked out of place if they had appeared in my column last month on sleep paralysis – individuals with disturbed sleep patterns seeing strange creatures staring at them and being attacked by unearthly intruders.

Sleep paralysis is a condition in which the sufferer experiences temporary paralysis when entering or emerging from sleep. It is sometimes accompanied by a strong sense of presence, terrifying visual and/or auditory hallucinations, and intense fear.

Despite the fact that sleep paralysis is scientifically recognised and reasonably well understood, there are many self-appointed UFO experts or "ufologists" who insist that if you have ever suffered from the symptoms of sleep paralysis, you have probably been abducted by aliens and you cannot remember the rest of the event, either because you have repressed it due to its horrific nature or because the aliens have wiped your memory. These ideas, along with the equally mistaken notion that hypnosis provides a reliable means to retrieve such hidden memories, are uncritically promoted in this film.