Not so close encounters

Packaged as a series of dramatized re-enactments of real-life events (a la The Blair Witch Project), The Fourth Kind makes claims that, if they possessed a shred of truth, would almost redeem the film from absurdity. Alas, its claims about being inspired by "actual case studies" and the incorporation of misleading statistics and fake news reports about unexplained disappearances in and around Nome, Alaska, led to a $20,000 payout from Paramount Pictures to the Alaska Press Club after area news organs uncovered grievous falsehoods.

This botched attempt at viral marketing also backfired with critics, who uniformly loathed the film. But it paid off with modest box-office success domestically. How The Fourth Kind will resonate with Europeans is anyone's guess, as its patina of veracity has been fairly well debunked by now. That said, the success of similar concept films (e.g. 2009's Paranormal Activity) would seem to indicate that credulity is a universal trait.

The title is a reference to the various levels classifying alleged alien encounters - in this case, abduction. Incorporating a heretofore unheard-of camera POV - that of demonically possessed alien owls observing hapless Alaskans - and a faux documentary aesthetic, The Fourth Kind offers a two-layered recounting of interviews conducted by Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) with residents of Nome, Alaska, a disproportionate number of whom suffer from sleep disorders. The storyline alternates between footage of the "real" Dr. Tyler recounting her harrowing tale (Jovovich plays an actress supposedly portraying the genuine article), and "re-enactments" of the interviews and corresponding events.

The events in question concern things that go bump in the night, namely extraterrestrial things. Good people are coerced into doing bad things - a nice attempted murder-suicide, some wanton destruction and so on - and visitations are made with progressively more threatening effects, until a full-on abduction leads to a missing-persons case of the variety that never gets closed.

Jovovich is unconvincing as the troubled Dr. Tyler. She's just too obviously herself to pass as the fragile, haunted protagonist. Maybe it's because we've seen her battle too many zombies, killers and alien insurrections to achieve anything other than her signature haute-couture heroine. Elias Koteas is his usual workmanlike self as a concerned colleague who improbably cannot accept empirical evidence of the otherworldly, even when it's gathered with his own two eyes.

The aliens themselves are nebulous shadow creatures who appeal largely to the imagination in their efforts to terrorize - that is, when not apparently occupying owl form. Whatever thrills the film achieves rest on its premise of supposed truth. It's not a particularly plausible or compelling premise, even with the filmmaker's final appeals at the film's close for the audience to "make up your own mind." The stars' pleas for raised awareness on the issue of alien abduction in Nome are an object lesson in the heights of insincerity that even passable actors can attain. If the film's weird final reels serve as nothing more than a testimonial about why actors should never be allowed to become politicians, The Fourth Kind will be worth something after all.

The marketing scheme employed by the studio was callous enough to reveal the true motives of the filmmakers: ticket sales. The dramatic action simply cannot work without a greater degree of suspension of disbelief than is generally required. The narrative has the word "gimmick" written all over it. While it's difficult to fault young writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi for his entrepreneurial spirit, it all goes to show that, even in this day and age, moviemaking schemes entirely devoid of art rarely amount to much.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com