The Fourth Kind is not a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even though it does take its name from the same alien encounter scale created by J. Allen Hynek. And it’s not a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, even though it seems to be using the same bullshit ‘This is totally real!’ marketing. The trailer for The Fourth Kind, followed by more thoughts:

The problem with this trailer is that, as far as I can tell, it’s bullshit. Good luck finding the woman who Milla Jovovich is playing. And while Nome, Alaska does have a missing persons history, it appears to be based on bias attacks: the missing tend to be Native Americans.

Creating a fake history and viral campaign for your movie is one thing, but when I Google some of this info there should be web pages that already exist to maintain the illusion. Kids today aren’t dumb, and once they do a simple Google search and realize the claims made in the trailer are hooey, they’re going to lose interest.

Which is too bad, because I’m all for an alien abduction thriller. Maybe this film will be better than the early stages of the marketing campaign.