Review: 'Fourth Kind'

Robert W. Butler | MCT News Service

'Fourth Kind' delivers a few goose bumps

"The Fourth Kind" is a "found footage" horror movie with a few new tweaks, though not enough to escape a certain clunkiness.

At the onset of Olatunde Osunsanmi's film, actress Milla Jovovich addresses the camera to announce that she'll be playing real-life Alaska psychologist Abigail Emily Tyler in re-enactments of actual events.

These re-enactments, we are assured, are based on genuine video and sound recordings of Tyler and her patients in Nome. At various times "Fourth Kind" employs a split screen to play side-by-side the re-enactments and the original grainy clinical recordings which inspired them.

In the wake of the mysterious death of her husband, Abbey continues her study of patients with sleep disorders. Dozens of locals report awaking at night and being confronted by a white owl. Under hypnosis their memories get so intense they become psychotic.

Abbey calls in a fellow psychologist from Anchorage to provide counsel and support. What they uncover is a pattern of alien abductions going back decades.

"The Fourth Kind" delivers a few goose bumps, but in the end the film is more desultory than disturbing.