THE FOURTH KIND (USA 2009) **
Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

THE FOURTH KIND is a science fiction horror thriller done in documentary style enactment about alien abduction set in Nome, Alaska.  Director Olatunde Osunsanmi is dead serious about his subject and sets to prove by the end of the film that alien abduction did happen.

Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler.  She has hypnotised a few patients and has herself and colleague (Elias Koteas) convinced that the patients have had aliens taken them away and returned.  As the patients do not recall anything of what happened or what the aliens look like, she assumes that memory have been erased as a result.  If all these seem highly improbable, Osunsanmi crosscuts images of Jovovich with those of the apparently ‘real’ Dr. Tyler to talking about her experiences to make the incidents more convincing.  At times Osunsanmi tries too hard with his film getting very repetitious.  The audience gets the point already.

But with disclaimers at the start of the film that all the name of the characters have been changed to protect the innocent and the fact that most of the real characters have denied any involvement of the film, the audience gets the feeling that what has transpired is a hoax.  The revelation by the sheriff (Will Patton) that Dr. Tyler’s husband was not stabbed (as Tyler maintains) also puts anything she has said in the past into question.

Still, THE FOURTH KIND is a disturbing piece on THE FOURTH KIND (which denotes alien abduction as derived from J. Allan Hynek’s classification of close encounters) and that should draw enough curiosity to get the film satisfactory box-office returns.  The film also shows how difficult it is to make a serious film about the subject without drawing laughter.