Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Fourth Kind, The

EMAILPRINTUniversal Pictures

Fourth Kind, The reviews
34
6.4 User Score:

Generally unfavorable reviews

Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 19 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Horror  |  Mystery  |  Sci-fi  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Olatunde Osunsanmi

Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 6, 2009

Running Time: 98 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: PG-13 for violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality

Starring Milla Jovovich

In 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind. The next level, abduction, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document...until now. (Universal Pictures)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

In truth, what follows is less disturbing than intriguing – to audiences hip to the mechanics of horror flicks, it's rare fun to be fooled, and this one is pretty damned clever.

Read Full Review >
63

USA Today Claudia Puig

You don't have to believe in far-fetched tales of mysterious beams of light and alien abductions to get caught up in The Fourth Kind.

Read Full Review >
50

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Sporadically clever and chilling.

Read Full Review >
50

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The result is not entirely uninteresting, but it suffers from some ill-advised decisions. In fact, the film's "hook" may be its greatest detraction.

Read Full Review >
50

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

While there are some genuinely creepy moments, it never truly ends up as more than an average "X-Files" episode.

Read Full Review >
50

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Too often, The Fourth Kind makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal.

Read Full Review >
50

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams

Technically proficient enough to keep us intrigued; but we shouldn't have to Google a movie to know if we were scared.

Read Full Review >
50

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.

Read Full Review >
50

New York Post Kyle Smith

The Fourth Kind has a clever gimmick and nothing more.

Read Full Review >
42

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.

Read Full Review >
40

Village Voice Scott Foundas

A couple of modestly effective shocks lie in store.

Read Full Review >
40

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.

Read Full Review >
40

Variety Rob Nelson

Even the most gullible auds will be challenged to buy into the picture, billed as "based on the actual case studies" and, in any case, rendered rather boring by writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi ("The Cavern").

Read Full Review >
40

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

This is a strange movie (it feels like a lost episode of the old Leonard Nimoy chestnut In Search of …) about strange people doing strange things.

Read Full Review >
40

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

The Fourth Kind has nowhere to go and sticks to its real-life/reel-life device. It feels like mud by the second act.

Read Full Review >
40

The New York Times Stephen Holden

May be humorless, paranoid nonsense, but its biggest failure is its inability to scare.

Read Full Review >
40

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

Unfortunately, none of the subsequent noise is all that scary, and the striving for "Paranormal Activity’s" buzz is shameless.

Read Full Review >
40

Time Richard Corliss

Osunsanmi wants you to believe that everything he shows you that's not reenacted by professionals really happened, and is documented by the omnipresent video cameras. It's a device used far more successfully in "Paranormal Activity," which had the added benefit of being a good movie.

Read Full Review >
39

NPR Ian Buckwalter

When he divides the screen into quadrants for his big finish, the effect is just laughable -- but then by that point, the movie is too.

Read Full Review >
38

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Fourth Kind is a pseudo-documentary like "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blair Witch Project." But unlike those two, which just forge ahead with their home video cameras, this one encumbers its flow with ceaseless reminders that it is a dramatization of real events.

Read Full Review >
30

Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen

Osunsanmi's big formal innovation tunrs out to be the split-screen pairing of patently bogus "archival" black-and-white video that shows alleged abductees undergoing hypnosis and color "reenactments" of same. Ultimately it's up to you, the viewer, to decide which is more boring.

Read Full Review >
30

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Osunsanmi's chutzpah exceeds his skill.

Read Full Review >
30

Los Angeles Times Robert Abele

They try to get 'real' about strange occurrences. Instead they get ludicrous.

Read Full Review >
25

San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli

As it stands,The Fourth Kind boasts a creepy kind of joke - and a confusing kind of horror.

Read Full Review >
25

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The Fourth Kind doesn’t build, instill, or maintain an audience’s fear. It just spends 98 minutes trying to prove that what you’re watching actually happened.

Read Full Review >
25

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

But seriously, folks, if you're going to make a scary movie, shouldn't you be able to do it without resorting to both "Blair Witch"-style found footage and movie stars? (Will Patton and Elias Koteas also show up as, respectively, an angry sheriff and a psychologist friend of Abbey's.)

Read Full Review >
0

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

By the end of its way-too-long 98 minutes, there are four things audiences will be haunted by: Jovovich's annoying, whispery monotone; silly closeups of owls; Will Patton's Z-movie turn as a grizzled sheriff, and dialogue like "It's too late to forget what you already know." Ain't that the truth.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 19 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Kevin F gave it a1:
Hey, it's like this stuff actually happened! No; this movie is obnoxious and spends time trying to prove to you this is real while avoiding a plot build up. I gave it a one for some good CGI effects.

Barry L gave it an8:
Terrifying if you go into this cold with no prior knowledge. An average experience if you know of the tricks. We went in cold and really enjoyed it.

Poppy Hall gave it a10:
I was so scared! I loved this movie. It had me on the edge of my seat and afterward I felt very unsettled. It had a very creepy feel, and the performances - even the small ones - were fantastic.

Chad S. gave it a4:
An owl is "the most imaginable evil on Earth" and smells like "putrid cinnamon", according to one of Dr. Abigail Tyler's patients, whose description of an alien lifeform sounds so absurd, you start to half-believe that the sleep hypnosis videotapes are indeed real. Truth must be stranger than fiction, the moviegoer thinks, because what screenwriter in his right mind would use an animal so utterly unscary, so closely related to the Harry Potter movies(and books), unless he was forced to, due to the historical record which precludes his own extra-terrestrial inventions. A feral flamingo, perhaps? A penguin, even. Accepting the documentary footage as a non-fiction element, a starting point for Milla Jonovich(as the real-life Dr. Abigail Tyler) and her co-stars to recreate the events seen on video and heard on audio, makes or breaks "The Fourth Kind"(a bastardization of the narrative/doc hybrid form used in Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's "American Splendor"), since the moviegoer is made self-aware that his/her suspension of disbelief is a decision that the filmmaker has already predetermined for the audience. Non-compliance with the alien abduction storyline as fact might be beside the point anyway, since the duped and unduped should be equally bored by the sheer hokiness of the archival segments interspersed throughout this relatively glossy docu-drama. Admittedly, the application of an existing academic institution's name in the graphics during a sit-down interview conducted by a writer with the "real-life" Dr. Tyler, gives the first-hand account an outward aspect of authenticity, as does the "name omitted" device "The Fourth Kind" uses during the doctor's sessions with her doomed patients(the same technique to preserve anonymity should have applied whenever the owl gets a mention.), but it all seems so pointless, so laborious, this fabrication, when the film is so lacking in suspense.

walter s gave it a10:
Milla Jovovich is an Amazing Actress, She can do any Genre she wants. I Loved this movie despite all the bad reviews, and gets us to wonder if Aliens are out there?.?

Popular on CBS sites: College Signing Day | Olympics | Lost | iPhone | Cell Phones | Video Game Reviews | Free Music

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use