Sorely lacking scares and aliens, “The Fourth Kind,” directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, drops the ball on an interesting premise. The title originates from UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind signifies abduction.
Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist researching supposed alien abduction cases in Nome, Alaska. Before the action begins, Jovovich eerily addresses the audience informing them that she is an actor portraying a real person.
After several patients experience identical sleeping problems, Tyler starts video taping their sessions and begins to suspect alien abduction. Tyler uses hypnosis on one patient with disastrous results, and from there she becomes more and more convinced.
Interviews with the “real” Dr. Tyler and sessions with her patients are intercut with dramatized footage of actual events. Therein lies the film’s biggest flaw – it tries so hard to sell itself as being based on “actual case studies” that one becomes even more suspicious of its legitimacy.
Gimmicky split screens simultaneously show sessions with real patients and dramatized patients. The idea that we’re watching real people is preposterously pounded into our heads again and again.
In the meantime, Tyler’s family continues to struggle with the loss of their husband and father. The unsolved murder adds some soapy family drama, with the daughter inexplicably losing her sight and the son blaming Tyler for his father’s death.
To be fair, there is more action in the movie than the trailer implies. A suicide and a possible alien visit add much needed variety to the scenes in Tyler’s office. But most of the scares are supposed to come from patents twitching around while under hypnosis. Yawn.
Recent horror hit “Paranormal Activity” uses the “found footage” concept well because it doesn’t try hard to pass itself off as real. “The Fourth Kind” never lets you forget, explicitly stating that it is “based on actual case studies” in its marketing campaign.
The film provides a couple of scares, but Osunsanmi is not competent enough to really terrify the audience. We never get to see anything which becomes very frustrating. “Paranormal Activity” is scary because it leaves most things to the imagination, but in this film it feels like a big cop out. I’d like to actually see some aliens.
Add to mix some unforgivably bad dialogue, continuity errors, and uneven acting, the scariest thing about “The Fourth Kind” is how bad it is.
- Eschew It - One and a Half Stars
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