Supposedly fact-based thriller about a recently widowed Alaska psychologist (Milla Jovovich) who becomes convinced that several patients she has been treating for a sleep disorder are in fact victims of alien abduction, and that the malevolent interplanetary visitors also killed her husband, though the local sheriff (Will Patton) and a colleague (Elias Koteas) she consults remain skeptical. The occasional jolt aside, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi's pseudo-dramatization, which intersperses "actual" video and audio of the case with alleged re-enactments, is slow-moving and largely ineffective, though the script's fleeting, potentially troublesome foray into theology is at least partially set right by the main character's explicitly Christian faith. Some violence, including a short scene of gory murder, brief nongraphic marital lovemaking, a half-dozen uses of profanity and a few crude terms.  A-III -- adults. (PG-13) 2009
 
The Fourth Kind (Full Review)

In the decade since "The Blair Witch Project" hit it big at the box office, several horror films -- including, most recently, Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" -- have followed its recipe for success by using video camera footage to lend realism to a fictional story. "The Fourth Kind" (Universal) makes the leap to presenting such scenes as "actual" documentation of real-life events, specifically a rash of supposed alien abductions in remote Nome, Alaska.

The occasional jolt aside, the results in this slow-moving, largely ineffective thriller are not especially convincing.

In keeping with his overall conceit, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi introduces us to two versions of his main character, psychologist Abigail Tyler: the wheelchair-bound and deeply spooked "original" -- whom he gravely interviews -- and, for purposes of supposed dramatization, actress Milla Jovovich. Back in 2000, we learn, the recently widowed Tyler was treating several Nome residents for a sleep disorder when she discovered that their symptoms were startlingly similar.

All, for instance, reported being stared at, to nerve-jangling effect, by a mysterious white owl. Once hypnotized to clarify their dim memories, however, at least two of Tyler's subjects came to the agonizing realization -- amid, as we're shown, much screaming and thrashing about -- that the gimlet-eyed bird was merely a psychological substitute for malevolent visitors of an extraterrestrial variety.

In addition to smelling like putrefied cinnamon, according to one victim's description, and speaking Sumerian -- a language extinct among humans for millennia -- these interplanetary baddies make a habit of whisking folk off to their spacecraft and experimenting on them in all manner of unspeakable ways, then returning them to their beds with their consciousness of the experience all but wiped clean.

Convinced that the intruders were to blame for her husband's death, and anxious to pursue her history-altering discovery, Tyler turns for support to friendly colleague Dr. Abel Campos (Elias Koteas). But Campos, like local lawman Sheriff August (Will Patton) -- who comes into conflict with Tyler after one of her patients goes on a murderous post-hypnotic rampage -- proves stubbornly skeptical.

Amid the hokey proceedings, the script makes a fleeting, potentially troublesome foray into theology, with an expert on Sumerian civilization asserting that the biblical accounts of the creation and the flood are derived from pagan myths, and the seemingly demonic aliens making garbled claims to divinity.

But Tyler -- who is earlier shown extemporizing an explicitly Christian grace before a family dinner -- sets things right, at least on the second topic, in one of the generally weak script's more worthwhile exchanges.

The film contains some violence, including a short scene of gory murder, brief nongraphic marital lovemaking, a half-dozen uses of profanity and a few crude terms. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. Motion Picture Association of America rating, PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

• A-I -- general patronage;
• A-II -- adults and adolescents;
• A-III -- adults;
• A-IV**
• L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• O -- morally offensive.
  

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