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Synopsis |
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Caution: This page is a spoiler
"The Fourth Kind" begins with an interview between Dr. Abagail Tyler and Olatunde Osunsanmi (the director). Tyler discusses a hypnotic session performed on her by a colleague, Dr. Abel Campos, attempting to remember back to the night her husband, Will, was murdered alongside her in bed. The session fails and Tyler is left in tears. After refusing Campos's advice to take some time off, she begins her studies of sleep-deprived patients of Nome, Alaska. As she begins her studies, she notes that a large number of her patients are awoken around 3 a.m. to a white owl staring at them through their bedroom window for hours at a time. The patients recall that they hear their door opening and a fear beyond words grips them. Tommy Fisher, one of Tyler's patients, is hypnotized in order to recapture what has been causing such terror. Tommy immediately goes neurotic, knocking over tables and chairs until Dr. Tyler can finally get him out of his trance. Tommy leaves immediately without relaying to Dr. Tyler what it is that caused his actions. Later that night, Tyler is called to the Fisher house by Sheriff August, because Tommy has taken his family hostage with a loaded gun. After telling Dr. Tyler that what he saw was so horrible that he could not bear to live for his children to see it, he kills himself and his family. Dr. Tyler is questioned by Sheriff August and ordered to discontinue her hypnotic sessions. She goes home and falls asleep while recording her thoughts in a tape recorder that she gives to her secretary the following morning. Campos, hearing of Tommy's shooting, is waiting for Tyler when she arrives. Also waiting on Tyler is another patient, Scott Stracinsky, who asks the doctors to hypnotize him. Driven by curiosity and sensing a possible connection with her husband's death, she agrees. After shaking, gagging and eventually puking, Scott is taken out of his hypnotic trance. He explains to Dr. Tyler that he was visited by non-human life forms and that the owl was not an owl at all. Campos is very skeptical until Tyler's secretary plays a portion of the tape recording from the previous night. Tyler is heard peacefully sleeping until all of the sudden a door creaks open. What follows is a non-human voice and terrifying screams presumably by Dr. Tyler. Upon further investigation, Dr. Tyler discovers a fresh scar on her shoulder and scratches on her floorboards. Tyler digs through her husband's research and discovers the name Dr. Awolowa Odusami, a historical linguist. Odusami agrees to meet with Tyler and Campos to determine the origin of the voices. He finds that the language is Sumerian, a dead language, in which only a few words have survived to present day. Tyler gets a call from Stracinsky's wife asking for her immediate presence at their home. Scott is lying in bed with a large bruise on his arm similar to the one on Dr. Tyler's shoulder. Scott, crying, asks to be hypnotized to help him remember what happened to him. When she administers the hypnosis, Scott begins to convulse uncontrollably and levitate off the bed while screaming in the Sumerian language. When Tyler can finally bring him back, he is paralyzed from the neck down. Scared about the implications of what she has done, she attempts to flee to North Carolina but is stopped by Sheriff August on her way out. Campos comes in with the Sheriff and states that Tyler had nothing to do with the accident. Tyler is released from her handcuffs and is instead put on house arrest with a deputy to watch the house. During the night, the deputy notices a flying object atop the Tyler household and rushes in after calling August. What they find is Tyler screaming in her daughter's room, claiming that a beam of light has snatched away her daughter. August does not believe her and Robbie, Tyler's son, is taken away as a result. Tyler asks Campos and Odusami to hypnotize her in order to bring her back to the night the tape recorder was left on, which she believes to be proof of her being abducted. They do so and a non-human voice protrudes from her in the Sumerian language. This is the most powerful scene in the movie as she schizophrenically argues with the aliens through her body. As Campos and Odusami attempt to revitalize her, she screams that her daughter be returned by the aliens. The men begin to scream and the camera falls, left on an empty room. The movie picks up the interview between Dr. Abagail Tyler and Olatunde Osunsanmi. Osunsanmi questions Tyler about what happened that day and she claims that her and her colleagues were abducted. The interview fades again and Tyler is now in a hospital bed. Sheriff August is the first one she sees as she opens her eyes and immediately begins to interrogate her. He asks her how Will, her husband, died. She states that he was stabbed while lying in bed next to her. August pulls out a photo of Will with a bullet in his head finally revealing that he committed suicide. August's next question is the whereabouts of her daughter, Ashley. Tyler reasserts her former claim that Ashley was seized by alien intruders. Tyler asks Campos to speak up and verify that he was abducted, but he instead remains silent. August is forced to permanently take Robbie out of her custody. The movie ends with the conclusion of the interview where Tyler still claims that her daughter was abducted. Tyler begins to get very emotional, causing Osunsanmi to end the interview prematurely. The camera zooms out to show that Dr. Tyler is in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down. An epilogue is given about many of the characters in the end, explaining that Dr. Tyler is deteriorating mentally and physically in a hospital in North Carolina. |
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