'The Fourth Kind' review

The silliness is out of this world

By Matt Pais

Posted November 5, 2009

Metromix

A movie studio would never lie for marketing purposes, right? If you believe that, you'll believe the supposedly authentic archival footage from October 2000, in which Alaska psychologist Abigail Tyler's sleep disorder study determines that people were abducted by aliens. In dramatized re-enactments of these events—that, weirdly enough, often appear side-by-side with the "real" footage—Milla Jovovich ("Resident Evil") plays the psychologist.

The buzz: "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" (among others) certainly prove that people can be freaked out by fake documentary footage presented as real, and we're game when it's clever and convincing. A problem: Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi doesn't realize that you're only supposed to dramatize events for which you don't have footage, which not only calls into question the "archives" (which mostly feature boring chit-chat) but constantly reminds us that the re-enactment features actors. Also, they're pretty bad actors, with Jovovich's mostly blank performance never matching up with the shell-shocked woman she's portraying.

The verdict: Perhaps we could have fun with the notion of this footage as "real" if it didn't conveniently get fuzzy and scrambled anytime something conclusive is about to happen. (That's frustrating, not spooky.) If these incidents were real, a documentary would be the way to go. Since they're not, there's just no excuse for everything in the film, aside from one legitimately jolting moment, to be so painfully dry.

Did you know? Apparently Dr. Tyler's patients who experienced this phenomenon woke up in the middle of the night to see an owl at their window. That's so lame and not-at-all scary that it has to be true. Or it's just bad writing.