“The Fourth Kind” begins with its lead actress, Milla Jovovich, insisting that “real” footage was used wherever possible throughout the film, including audio and film recordings. This is followed by the “real” footage of the film’s director interviewing a strikingly alien-looking “real” Dr. Abigail Tyler. This creepy woman starts to ramble on, giving clues to the “true story” we are about to witness. While her “true story” could be oh-so-compelling—what is really going on in a remote Alaskan town when multiple people start sharing the same sleepy memories of owls—it opts to bludgeon itself to death with its own “evidence,” which succeeds in interrupting built-up tension wherever it occurs. Jarring first-year-o’-film-school split screens reveal the poor acting abilities of the “real people” in the story, making the “actors” seem more convincing. The film also spends so much time hammering on the “truth” of its story that it literally forces you to wonder if it’s not all one big fat lie.

And, (no) big surprise, it is and Universal has to pay money for its viral marketing.

The truth behind hypnosis—the tool the film uses to recover hidden memories of alien abductions from the “real” people of Nome, Alaska—might have been applied to make this “true story” scary movie a much better one. I’ve come up with four (hyuk hyuk) suggestions that “true story” horror filmmakers can use to help make an audience believe in something that isn’t real.

In light of how easily the internet can be manipulated, I’m going to rely on very real published psychology textbook and its supporting studies everywhere I talk about hypnosis.

Suggestibility

According to David G. Myer’s “Psychology: Eight Edition in Modules” (Worth Publishers: 2007) textbook, the definition of hypnosis is “a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggest to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur (286).” Essentially, it’s not about the magical psychologist who can bend people to her will, but rather that the process engages “people’s ability to focus on certain images or behaviors” (Myers, 287).  “To some extent, nearly everyone is suggestible” (Myers, 287). And for the most part, if you are easily suggestible when not under hypnosis, you are easily suggestible under hypnosis (Kirsch & Braffman, 2001: Myers, 287).

Lesson #1: Not everyone is going to believe you, but a majority of people will go in wanting to believe you (being suggestible). Take this as a given, and don’t start the film with elaborate testimonials and setups trying to show the audience that something is true. Also consider that the more elaborate and insistent a story becomes, the more time and fodder you give your audience to find holes. Using simple text at the beginning (or the end) of the film and then letting the story tell itself seems to works better.

Posthypnotic Suggestions and Dissociated States

In current practice, posthypnotic suggestions are given to people to help them change their lives once the hypnosis session has ended. Posthypnotic suggestions seem especially helpful with obesity, but drug, alcohol, and smoking addictions do not respond well to hypnosis (Nash, 2001: Myers, 288).  Hypnosis has also been shown to help alleviate pain (Druckman & Bjork, 1994; Patterson, 2004: Myers, 288-290) and “nearly 10 percent of us can become so deeply hypnotized that even major surgery can be performed without anesthesia” (Myers 289).   One theory for this pain relief (and possibly, for doing something differently in or after hypnosis than you did before) is the idea that hypnosis is a dissociation, or “a split between different levels of consciousness”; it’s not that the person doesn’t feel the pain, but that hypnosis can focus attention away from the pain (Myers 289).

Lesson #2: Giving people suggestions to believe something in a hypnotic state works, but arguably because they are already focused on something and in an altered state. You could argue that watching a great horror film places you in an altered state: one of focused fear, even terror, when in reality you are perfectly safe. “True Story” horror filmmakers: use this to your advantage and don’t forget you are making a scary movie. If people are terrified and emotionally involved in a movie, they may be so focused on it that they disregard plot holes, bad special effects, and even bad acting. Essentially, don’t let the “evidence” interrupt the suspense and thrills of the storyline. “The Fourth Kind” is a great example of what not to do, delivering the “evidence” predictably during every “hypnosis session” and every ten minutes or so via overdone shots.

Social Pressure

While some believe hypnosis is an altered state, others believe it is a social phenomenon; not that people are consciously lying about being hypnotized, but that “rather, like actors who get caught in their roles, they begin to feel and behave in ways appropriate to the role of ‘good hypnotic subjects’” (Myers 289-290). For example, people told to scratch their ear when they hear the word “psychology” after they come out of hypnosis do so: unless the researcher told them that hypnosis shows a person’s “gullibility (Myers 290). Basically, you are only hypnotized and listen to suggestion in hypnosis if you want to.

Lesson #3: I would argue filmgoers like to feel like they are part of a “good audience;” the thrill of sitting at a good movie includes sharing the experience with others, jumping at the same time as everyone, hearing everyone around you let out a gasp (see “Paranormal Activity” trailers). If the audience is given several pieces of evidence that aren’t held together with a solid, sequential storyline, and then are expected “to make up their own minds,” as Jovovich and the director state at the end, they will take on that challenge and quickly (and easily) debunk your “proof.” If an audience is just expected to witness something, they will witness, and bear much better word-of-mouth. Ask anyone who has seen the “The Fourth Kind”—were they more wrapped up in the scariness of the story and its potential, or in whether or not it was even true? We do as we’re asked to do.

Oh, the Memories

The very fact that you are in a suggestible state means that when you remember memories, you may be led into remembering things by the hypnotist (e.g. the hypnotists asks “did you hear loud noises?” and so the subject remembers loud noises) makes it hard to support “alien abduction” memories. More pointedly, “studies reveal that most reports of UFOs have come from people who are predisposed to believe in aliens, are highly hypnotizeable, and have undergone hypnosis” (Newman & Baumeister, 1996; Nickell, 1996: Myers, 288).

Lesson #4: Every horror film has the moment where people experiencing something say something along the lines of “did you hear/see that?” The idea is we see these glimpses that “plant” ideas of what we might be seeing in our heads; the horror builds as our imaginations run with these ideas. In the “The Fourth Kind” we are forewarned about what we’re going to see, so nothing is left up to the imagination. Before we see a devastated man kill his family, he says he’s going to do it. Before we see the alien craft float over the house, we know it’s the middle of the night and that they have been abducting the people inside (e.g. the aliens will come at this time and in this way). Even when we were looking at someone levitate on a bed and make scary Sumerian voices, it was expected: they were hypnotized (so we knew something would happen, according to the rules of the film), we had learned about the Sumerian from an expert, and then the person doesn’t do anything besides levitate and scream. The excuse for “did we see that?” moments are all predictable things cloaked in static. Static does not suspense make when you are told what you’re missing.

“The Fourth Kind” tried to suggest its story was real through the viral marketing that now has it in trouble (my favorite unquestioned piece of “evidence”). Unfortunately, without a well-paced, well-acted (I blame the “real people,” not the “actors,” like Jovovich) film, no amount of viral marketing will make us want to believe in a “true story” where one does not exist. Ultimately, regardless of our varying levels of suggestibility, everyone in an audience is craving a well-crafted, suspenseful, frightening, thought-provoking experience, not a poorly-edited relay of false clues that beg us to question—and easily dismiss—the “reality” we already know we are not seeing.  We don’t want a film to prove itself real; we want a film to feel real, through the acting, the pacing, the shots, and the plot.

And how about you, @Rama readers? Did you believe in “The Fourth Kind”?  Did the anticlimactic nature of it all ruffle your horror-lovin’, truth-seeking feathers (notice how I plant suggestions…)?