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closeWednesday, Nov. 04, 2009
Gimmicky 'The Fourth Kind' could've used a closer encounter with good acting
Universal
STRANGE MEDICINE: Milla Jovovich plays psychotherapist Dr. Abigail Tyler in The Fourth Kind. Universal
The Fourth Kind
**
PG-13 (violent, disturbing images; terror, thematic elements, brief sexuality); 98 min.
"I am actress Milla Jovovich," the star says directly to the audience as she introduces her new movie, The Fourth Kind. And those are pretty much the last true words out of her mouth in this gimmicky, "Yes, this really happened" alien-abduction horror hooey.
Close Encounters fans will recognize the title. Alien sighting, close encounter of the first kind; making friends and phoning home, close encounter of the third kind; kidnapped, probed, poked and freaked out of your mind? That’s "a close encounter of the fourth kind."
Jovovich plays a Nome, Alaska, psychotherapist whose sleep-deprived patients are telling her chilling, cryptic stories of owls and abduction when she puts them under hypnosis.
The conceit that writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi milks for all it’s worth is that the "real" Dr. Abigail Tyler is shown in a video interview with the director for Chapman University, in which a cadaverous-looking actress narrates her story, her encounters with patients who flipped out and even killed themselves over what they’d experienced.
Osunsanmi, a protégé of Joe Smokin’ Aces Carnahan, uses split screens to show "real" police video and "real" hypnosis-session video playing out opposite his actors re-enacting those moments.
"What you believe is yours to decide" is the awkward way actor and director make their case. OK. And a quick check of the Web, where the Anchorage Daily News and others have exposed the hustle and hoax, helps.
The "reality" scenes are chilling enough, but the movie isn’t helped by a blank-faced turn by Jovovich. She was so much better in A Perfect Getaway that it’s as if she was confused by the demand that she keep breaking the fourth wall in The Fourth Kind, telling us she’s an actress. The Fourth Kind is a fraud, but that wouldn’t matter if it were scarier and better acted.
— Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
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