Movie Review: ‘Fourth Kind’ not worthy of close encounter

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Published: November 6, 2009

"I am actress Milla Jovovich,” the star says directly to the audience as she introduces her new movie, "The Fourth Kind.” And those are pretty much the last true words out of her mouth in this gimmicky, alien-abduction horror hooey. It’s a film whose writer-director is so heavily invested in making us buy into it as "fact” that he wastes screen time on claims of veracity when he should have invested his movie with more genuinely hair-raising moments.

Milla Jovovich stars in "The Fourth Kind." UNIVERSAL PICTURES PHOTO

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"The Fourth Kind”

1:38

1½ stars

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton.

(Violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality)

"Close Encounters” fans will recognize the title. Alien sighting, close encounter of the first kind; making friends and phoning home, close encounter of the third kind; kidnapped, probed, poked and freaked out of your mind? That’s "the fourth kind.”

Jovovich plays a Nome, Alaska, psychotherapist whose husband has died and whose sleep-deprived patients are telling chilling stories of owls and abduction when she puts them under hypnosis. The conceit writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi milks is that the "real” Dr. Abigail Tyler is shown in a video interview with the director for Chapman University, in which a cadaverous-looking actress narrates her story and her encounters with patients who flipped out and even killed themselves over what they’d experienced.

Osunsanmi uses split screens to show "real” police video and "real” hypnosis session video playing out opposite his actors re-enacting those scenes. With "found video” again igniting the horror-film market, these hucksters must be kicking themselves that "Paranormal Activity” came out a month before this, stealing their video veritas thunder.

"What you believe is yours to decide” is the way actor and director make their case. A check of the Web, where The Anchorage Daily News and others have exposed the hustle and hoax, helps. What the "real” Chapman University got out of buying into this fake-out isn’t clear.

The "reality” scenes are chilling, but the movie isn’t helped by a blank-faced turn by Jovovich. She was never an actress with much range, but she was so much better in September’s "A Perfect Getaway.”

Elias Koteas plays therapist to the therapist, though he doesn’t lend the credibility you’d expect. Only Will Patton, as a sheriff who doesn’t have to turn to the camera to insist he’s not lying, finds pathos and fear in what’s happening in his town.

Movies with actors are fictional, even if based on a true story. This one is a fraud, but it wouldn’t matter if it were scarier and better acted.

— Roger Moore, The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services