Writer: Nur Safina Othman

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Watch this if you liked: "The Blair Witch Project", "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind"

"The Fourth Kind" refers to a category of extraterrestrials that abduct human beings who have no chance of return. Criticism on this film has been coming steadily, especially since director Olatunde Osunsanmi and lead actress Milla Jovovich explain to us documentary-style in the opening minutes of the film that what happened at Nome in Alaska are true events. We follow a psychology expert named Abigail Tyler who believes residents in the area have gone missing because of aliens. However evidence from Alaskan licensing authorities are said to contain no record of such a person, while it has emerged that the producers of the film have created web journals of the alleged fictional person a month before the film was released. Whatever the truth may be, an undeniable result of the proceedings is that the family members of the Nome victims have been reported to be angry about such an insensitive depiction while still in mourning.

Jovovich is at the forefront of the film, speaking to the audience that she will play a Dr. Abigail Tyler and the footage we will see are real. It transpires that the doctor had been treating her insomniac patients, all who complained about seeing an owl in their nightmares. Ensuing hypnosis treatment on them caused one of the patients to kill.

When you watch "The Fourth Kind", what is acting and what is real becomes inseparable. The performance from the cast is top notch, except for Jovovich, who ironically fails to resemble the Dr. Tyler in the "real footage". She's far too neat and pretty whereas the "real" doctor obviously looked like a psychotic woman in need of help.

Still, the movie is intense and exciting. The dream sequences involving the owl and aliens are scary and some audiences may find trouble sleeping. We may have all been fooled but the product is respectable as an effective piece of filmmaking. Like Jovovich says, it's up to us what to believe.


Cinema Online, 08 November 2009