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Fourth Kind, The
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 27 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
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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)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
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...
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 >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 >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 >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 >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Too often, The Fourth Kind makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal.
Read Full Review >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 >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.
Read Full Review >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 >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >The New York Times Stephen Holden
May be humorless, paranoid nonsense, but its biggest failure is its inability to scare.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >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 >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 >Los Angeles Times Robert Abele
They try to get 'real' about strange occurrences. Instead they get ludicrous.
Read Full Review >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 >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 >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 >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 5.6 (out of 10) based on 12 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?.?
