The Fourth Kind (2009)

Hollywood Movie
Cast:
Milla Jovovich
Elias Koteas
Will Patton
Corey Johnson
Director:
Olatunde Osunsanmi
Overview:
1n 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document-until now. Set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where--mysteriously since the 1960s--a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered. Here in this remote region, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler began videotaping sessions with traumatized patients and unwittingly discovered some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented Landing closely on the sleeper heels of "Paranormal Activity" comes "The Fourth Kind," an alien-abduction thriller that combines purported raw case-study footage with dramatic "re-creations" to unsuccessful effect.

Although writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi puts a lot of work into the film's "is it or isn't it" (as in a hoax) conceit, the gimmick proves more distracting than disturbing. Multiple split-screens shared by supposed real-life victims and actors playing them ultimately serve to distance viewers from the mythology instead of drawing them inward.

Whether the film's question of authenticity is enough to draw decent opening-weekend audiences will depend on the effectiveness of Universal's viral marketing campaign, but it's likely the theatrical encounter will be brief.

Taking its title from ufologist J. Allen Hynek's classification of extraterrestrial sightings, with the fourth kind referring to a hands-on abduction, the picture is set in Nome, Alaska, where psychologist Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) hears a number of her traumatized patients describing chillingly similar nocturnal experiences.

They all begin with the appearance of a strange white owl at their window, but through subsequent hypnosis recorded by Dr. Tyler's trusty video camera, they each become victims of a violent encounter with a nasty-sounding, Sumarian-speaking entity.

That "Fourth Kind" is actually not as dismissively silly as the above sounds is because of all that backup documentation that Osunsanmi assembles, including an archival interview he does with a woman identified as the real Dr. Tyler shot at Southern California's Chapman University.

Although Osunsanmi and producer Terry Lee Robbins, who shares story credit, are both Chapman alumni, the closest you'll come to an interview with an Abigail Tyler on the university's Web site is one with Abigail Van Buren, aka Dear Abby.

The fact that the film already is driving folks to the Internet means it accomplishes its goal to some degree, but it would have been far more potent without that simultaneous dramatization supplied by Jovovich, Elias Koteas as a sympathetic colleague and Will Patton as a dubious law enforcer.

Adding to that artifice is an insistent orchestral score by Atli Orvarsson that constantly feels at odds with the production's desire to be taken as the real deal.

Watch Movie THE FOURTH KIND here:


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