'Fourth Kind' fragmented and frivolous
Prepare to feel slightly conned by "The Fourth Kind."
Every time something mysterious is about to happen on so-called "archival" video footage, the image goes haywire at just the second it promises to show us a glimpse of an alien presence or of an object floating over a house.
"The Fourth Kind" operates on the harebrained premise that it's not enough for audiences to merely witness "documented" footage of Alaskan residents recalling alien abductions and painful extraterrestrial colonoscopies while under hypnosis.
No, we also get actors faithfully re-enacting those scenes. Sometimes, director Olatunde Osunsanmi uses a split screen so we can see the "real" UFO abductees screaming in terror on the left, while on the right, we see actors mimicking them down to every wide-eyed shudder and screech.
What's the point of this exercise, outside of marveling at the ability of the cast to match every spasm and moan of the people in the "authentic" footage?
To make an effective, frightening little post-Halloween thriller, Osunsanmi should have opted either for a pseudo-documentary style ("Paranormal Activity" or "The Blair Witch Project") or a full-blown dramatic feature ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind") allegedly based on those "actual case studies."
"Fourth Kind" stars Milla Jovovich, who directly addresses us to say she's acting the role of Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist in Nome, Alaska, where people have been disappearing for years.
"It's up to you to decide what to believe," Jovovich tells us.
We also see the "real" Abigail Tyler in inferior-grade video-quality footage where she tells Osunsanmi her story during what appears to be a TV interview originated at Chapman University in California.
(I contacted the filmmaking office at Chapman and asked if Osunsanmi had actually interviewed "Tyler" or if he just used the Chapman TV logo as a gimmick. A student worker named Lauren answered my call and checked around. "Nobody really knows," she told me, "but I'm pretty sure that he just took the Chapman logo for the movie." Osunsanmi also was a student at Chapman.)
Tyler (Jovovich) notices that many of her clients complain about the same thing: waking up at night to see a mysterious white owl gazing at them through a window.
And Harry Potter isn't around.
"No!" a client shrieks during hypnosis. "It's not an owl!"
Tyler contacts a colleague (Elias Koteas) to help her connect the dots between the cases where Nome residents are spotting owls and becoming psychologically unglued.
Tyler puts one patient under hypnosis, and he recalls what sounds like an alien abduction. Then he goes home and kills his entire family before committing suicide.
This makes the pragmatic, no-nonsense local sheriff (Will Patton) really mad, and he accuses Tyler of triggering the murders and causing patient unrest, even when he has witnesses to the contrary.
What does all this add up to? I'm not sure. I guess it's up to you to decide.
"The Fourth Kind" touches on ideas from Erich von Daniken's best-seller "Chariots of the Gods," a book that concludes Earth was visited by aliens mistaken as angels and deities by primitive humans.
The film also suggests an explanation for demonic possession, especially when Tyler leaves her recorder running and it picks up a satanic voice speaking in Sumerian, a language from the time of Christ.
So, if it really is up to me to decide what to believe, then I believe that Osunsanmi, director of the stagnant stalactite horror tale "The Cavern," has made a convoluted, frivolous, schizophrenic horror movie out of a convoluted, frivolous, schizophrenic idea.
And I wish that owl would leave me alone.
<p class=factboxtext12col>★★</p> <p class=factboxtext12col><b>Starring:</b> Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton</p> <p class=factboxtext12col><b>Directed by:</b> Olatunde Osunsanmi</p> <p class=factboxtext12col><b>Other:</b> A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations, violence. 98 minutes</p>