20 Horror Movie Characters We NEVER See

Aliens are extremely tough to pull off well, especially in a lower-budget horror film like The Fourth Kind, and so filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi was absolutely smart to keep things vague.

Despite being panned by critics upon release, the film has won itself something of a cult following in the years since, largely due to its faux-documentary framing and admittedly unsettling style.

Crucially, though the presence of the aliens is consistently felt throughout the film by way of shadows and flashes of light, they're never shown in plain view and often concealed under degraded video footage.

It's an approach that definitely left many frustrated when The Fourth Kind was first released back in 2009, but it also likely prevented the film from collapsing in on itself with a potentially hokey extraterrestrial reveal.

It's still not a great movie despite its fans, though this was definitely the right creative call.