The Fourth Kind (2009)
Average Rating: 4/10
Reviews Counted: 111
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 90
While it boasts a handful of shocks, The Fourth Kind is hokey and clumsy and makes its close encounters seem eerily mundane.
Average Rating: 3.5/10
Critic Reviews: 31
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 28
While it boasts a handful of shocks, The Fourth Kind is hokey and clumsy and makes its close encounters seem eerily mundane.
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Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 169,962
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Movie Info
Set in the fall of 2000 and purportedly based on actual events, The Fourth Kind stars Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler, a Nome, Alaska-based psychotherapist whose videotaped sessions with her patients offer the most compelling evidence of alien abduction ever documented. Elias Koteas and Will Patton co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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Cast
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Milla Jovovich
Dr. Abigail Tyler -
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The Fourth Kind Trailer & Photos
All Critics (111) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (90) | DVD (4)
When the director divides the screen into quadrants for his big finish, the effect is just laughable -- but then by that point, the movie is too.
Top CriticUnfortunately, none of the subsequent noise is all that scary, and the striving for Paranormal Activity's buzz is shameless.
[A] dull, clumsy little movie.
No, no, no, no.
Badly acted by everyone (including the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, who appears onscreen), this insipid jumble's idea of fright is incessant screaming.
Ultimately, the film's narrative segments are far too glossy and over-stylized, larded with ponderous scoring, obvious melodrama and split-screen visuals that offset the "reenactments" with the "real."
Something weird is going on in Nome, Alaska. Unsolved murders. suicidal freak-outs. a bunch of people having eerie, similar nightmares. and a spooky white owl.
It's an interesting meta-textual experiment, but that doesn't in itself make for an interesting movie, or a suspenseful one. There are things to like about it, but the whole doesn't really seem equal to the sum of its parts.
[The] ostensible archival footage proves so clunky and transparently phony that the entire gimmick collapses.
If there were a low point of viral movie marketing last decade, consider "The Fourth Kind" the Marianas Trench. The title refers to four levels of alien interaction, and the pedestrian plotting on display proved Steven Spielberg stopped at the right one.
"Attempting shock value and extraterrestrial disturbance to generate a cult smash, Kind will likely tire audiences before it ever has a chance to swindle them."
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The arrogance and ignorance on display is truly amazing. Arrogance of its superiority over the audience's intellect and ignorance of filmmaking craft.
It's my policy to sit through every film that opens theatrically in Atlanta. If I was going to violate that policy, it would be for this film. I hope I make my point. Paul Chambers, CNN.
The Fourth Kind is more likely to elicit laughter than the suspense it promised in the opening monologue.
Frankly, this movie is quite scary when it's viewed with the idea that this is the film version of creepy disappearances that are really happening in Nome, Alaska. When it's not that, it's almost laughable.
Where is Fox Mulder when you need him?
The "The Fourth Kind" poses as another successful documentary on the hot trail of "Paranormal Activity". Too bad this film is missing many ingredients to make it a blockbuster success.
He apparently thinks white owls are a lot scarier than they are. (I mean, I guess because their heads swivel around, you can't sneak up on them from behind. But when would you need to sneak up on an owl?)
Purporting to be a true story of alien abduction, in reality it's a clumsy attempt to update the hoax technique Orson Welles perfected seven decades ago.
... a sophisticated hoax ...
The first line in The Fourth Kind has Milla Jovovich calling herself an 'actress,' so we know right away the film is lying.
The Fourth Kind delivers a handful of decent shocks but it's ultimately let down by a weak plot, some patchy performances and the fact that the fictionalised reconstruction element doesn't really work.
Has out-Blair Witch'd The Blair Witch Project.
(Director) Olatunde Osunsanmi, his cast and crew work so hard to make it all seem so real that you spend more time debating with yourself whether what you are watching is truth or fiction ...
Audience Reviews for The Fourth Kind
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Dr. Abigail Tyler: Someone or something came into my room. They took me away.
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- Dr. Abigail Tyler: [When Will get's stabbed] Ohhhh!
- Dr. Abigail Tyler: There's blood everywhere! Everywhere, it's all over me.
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- Dr. Abigail Tyler: In the end, what you believe is yours to decide.
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- Dr. Abigail Tyler: An encounter in the first kind, that's when you see a UFO. The second kind is when you see evidence of it: crop circles, radiation. The third kind is when you make contact. But the fourth kind, there's nothing more frightening than the fourth. You see, that one is when they abduct you.
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Latest News on The Fourth Kind
December 25, 2012:
Five Favorite Films with West Memphis Three's Damien EcholsIt's hard to imagine just how surreal Damien Echols' life must have been. In 1994, the teenager was...
November 12, 2009:
Universal Settles Fourth Kind LawsuitSaying the movie undermines their credibility as news organizations, a handful of Alaskan newspapers...
November 5, 2009:
Critics Consensus: A Christmas Carol Dazzles But DisappointsThis week at the movies, we've got some modern-day Dickens (Disney's A Christmas Carol, starring Jim...
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Foreign Titles
- Phenomenes Paranormaux (FR)
- La cuarta fase (ES)
