Rating: 8/10

Writers: Olatunde Osunsanmi (screenplay), Olatunde Osunsanmi & Terry Robbins (story)
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton

Studio: Universal Pictures

After watching THE FOURTH KIND, I was more a baffled zombie than a person for the next 24 hours or so. Not wanting to believe what the film told me to take as fact. It couldn’t be, could it? Now, about a week after the watching the film, I am a person again, and maybe a little embarrassed over how much I let THE FOURTH KIND affect me. I can’t deny that I let the film do exactly what it wanted to do – it got in my head and seriously messed me up for a temporary period of time with its inventive and convincing story-telling techniques.

THE FOURTH KIND begins with the film’s star Milla Jovovich, telling you that she will be playing the film’s main character, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (who, according to the film, is a real person). Jovovich then goes to explain that the film is based on real video and audio footage from Dr. Tyler, as well as interviews done by Dr. Tyler with patients. Furthermore, supposedly real video and audio footage will occasionally be inserted into the film.

How authentic you believe the video and audio from Dr. Tyler’s studies, and also that of the local police force that become involved in the story’s strange happenings, will determines how effective THE FOURTH KIND will be for you. If you are willing to go with it at least a little bit, and momentarily suspend your disbelief, THE FOURTH KIND will be a terrifying cinematic experience for you. If not, you will probably be bored and maybe insulted.

The “real” footage is cleverly interwoven into THE FOURTH KIND, as it is cut in and out during the film’s most unbelievable moments. Without this footage, THE FOURTH KIND would be easy to dismiss as an exaggerated farce that is using extreme liberties with its “based on real events” claim, but the extra footage and audio makes my brain say, “maybe not.” If the material does turn out to be fake (and I will not tell you one way or the other), then this is still a great technique, and one that should cause you to hesitate from immediately dismissing the film as bullshit.

The screenwriter and director of THE FOURTH KIND, Olatunde Osunsanmi, even appears in the film to help you buy what he is selling. Clips of Osunsanmi interviewing what we are told is the real Dr. Abigal Tyler are shown throughout the film. Dr. Tyler looks a living ghost, someone who has the appearance of a person who has lived through very traumatic times. If this Dr. Tyler is a lie, then the make-up crew and Osunsanmi did a great job of creating Dr. Tyler’s disturbing physical appearance. The clips of the interview, along with sound bites of Dr. Tyler’s seemingly lifeless voice, help the film suck you in from the beginning, as part of Osunsanmi’s interview is one of the first things we see after Jovovich’s introduction.

The parts of the film that are dramatized are more to fill in the film’s story – a road map leading us to our next terrifying documentary resembling inserts. And the dramatizations are fine at serving this purpose, but it will be the raw footage that keeps flashing through your mind when you leave the theater.

If you go in with an open mind to THE FOURTH KIND, you should get exactly what you want from a film about alien abductions – an unsettling tale that makes you think, “maybe there is something out there.”