Saleem’s Annual Horror Scene Gallery #7: The Fourth Kind

 

Movie Title: 

The Fourth Kind

Movie Scene: 

Abigail's Possession Tape

The Fourth Kind is a found footage sci-fi horror film that attempted something pretty unique and refreshing within the genre formula by claiming to be a reenactment of actual archival footage. It took this approach by presenting itself as a documentary and later structuring itself occasionally in a split-screen style to display its “recreation” simultaneously with its supposed “real footage”. Whether or not this direction succeeded entirely as the film intended is a conversation for another time, but what it lead to was undoubtably one of the most unsettling scenes in the history of horror cinema. 

Our scene highlight for this gallery happens towards the end of the film where its proclaimed archival footage is being shown involving a possession of sorts taking place. In a similar vein to my reaction to the camera flash scene in Mama, Abigail's hypnosis/possession tape is both tension building and audibly terrifying. The found footage element is explained with our protagonist being recorded as she undergoes hypnosis to recall the events of an alien abduction that involved the kidnapping of her daughter. Through the hypnosis, we see both the recreation segments and found footage swapping back and forth (which is interesting but not particularly scary). And then...things take a more escalated turn towards a more bone chilling route.

Once the scene completely abandons its documentary recreation element and focuses entirely on its found footage "evidence", Abigail is shown to be physically losing control while under hypnosis. Her body begins to flail around in her seat as the footage becomes gradually distorted. Her eyes roll back, she begins to float above the frame, and the tape gets filled with static noise. The sound of her screams of agony begins to distort and a strange inhuman-like voice takes over. This is where the film brings back its split-screen presentation style, but instead of having a recreation playing on one side, they utilize that space to provide subtitles for the distorted audio. It's a brilliant way for the film to cleverly imbue a sense of authenticity to what the audience is seeing.

The direction here brilliantly conveys a very distortedly captured event making it out to be "real paranormal evidence" which is furthered emphasized by a dramatically haunting interview scene taking place later on. But as for the footage itself, the voices that are heard between Abigail frantically begging an unseen entity to give her back her daughter and another separate voice speaking in a foreign ancient language (Sumerian) is spine tingling. The subtitle translations is equal parts intriguing and disturbing in its context involving a supernatural force claiming to be God and will never return her daughter. This mostly off screen interaction is unsettling due to its chilling imagery (Abigail's unnaturally contorted and lifeless look after the footage clears back up), unnerving dialogue, and overall sound design.