How’s this for a creepy coincidence: For the second time in a year, millions of Americans are going to be terrified by the sight of a pretty woman in Alaska. This time, though, it’s totally different — because we’re talking about someone who can’t get people to take her seriously, has problems with her kids and has a beef with a cop.
“The Fourth Kind” has a clever gimmick and nothing more. It opens with Milla Jovovich talking directly to the audience, explaining that she is “actress Milla Jovovich” and that we’re about to see her and other performers re-create mysterious events that occurred in Nome, Alaska, in 2000. She promises to share actual archival footage and audio recording of the events, interspersed with the dramatizations.
All of this is straight-up bull calculated to get teens Googling around to figure out “what really happened.” The similar “Paranormal Activity,” which went with a full-on (instead of halfway) “Blair Witch” style, worked far more effectively. Yet “The Fourth Kind” does keep you off balance for a while and wins points for originality. There are split screens of the time-stamped “archival footage” (actually, ugly actors in poorly lit scenes with the grainy quality of surveillance video) next to the same scenes being performed by Jovovich and the other name actors.
She plays a shrink with two sullen kids trying to figure out what is causing her patients to shoot themselves, speak in ancient tongues and levitate. An angry cop (Will Patton) keeps rushing in threatening to arrest her (even when witnesses and other cops have seen that she doesn’t do anything wrong). He offers helpful advice like, “You can’t just stop being insane whenever you want. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you.” Thanks. But we already knew that from observing the persistently demented hatred that continues to chase the best-known Alaskan like an evil spirit.
The buildup is OK, and the movie may work for a while with credulous children, but the third act is where a horror flick has to make something happen. This one probably should have zigged into demonic possession (which would have been easier to swallow) instead of zagging into UFOs.
There’s some chintzy “archival” images that mainly consist of visual static, lots of they-took-my-baby screaming and a chat with an alien kidnapper (caught on audiotape!) speaking ancient Sumerian. “Child . . . never . . . returned,” he thunders, in Sumerian. The guy sounds like Animal on “The Muppet Show.”