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The Fourth Kind (2009)

tomatometer

17

Average Rating: 3.9/10
Reviews Counted: 109
Fresh: 19 | Rotten: 90

While it boasts a handful of shocks, The Fourth Kind is hokey and clumsy and makes its close encounters seem eerily mundane.

11

Average Rating: 3.4/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 24

While it boasts a handful of shocks, The Fourth Kind is hokey and clumsy and makes its close encounters seem eerily mundane.

audience

44

liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 167,480

My Rating

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

PG-13, 1 hr. 38 min.

Mystery & Suspense

Olatunde Osunsanmi

Mar 16, 2010

$25.5M

Universal Pictures

All Critics (110) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (20) | 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.

July 4, 2010 Full Review Source: NPR | Comment
NPR
Top Critic IconTop Critic

[A] dull, clumsy little movie.

November 9, 2009 Full Review Source: At the Movies | Comments (8)
At the Movies
Top Critic IconTop Critic

No, no, no, no.

November 9, 2009 Full Review Source: At the Movies | Comments (11)
At the Movies
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Badly acted by everyone (including the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, who appears onscreen), this insipid jumble's idea of fright is incessant screaming.

November 6, 2009 Full Review Source: New York Daily News | Comments (3)
New York Daily News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

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."

November 6, 2009 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
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The mission here is to demonstrate how, in this explosive age of dubious information, cynicism can be quickly trumped by gullibility.

November 6, 2009 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | Comment (1)
Globe and Mail
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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.

September 30, 2011 Full Review Source: American Profile | Comment

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.

March 22, 2011 Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | Comment
ComingSoon.net

[The] ostensible archival footage proves so clunky and transparently phony that the entire gimmick collapses.

January 5, 2011 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness | Comment
Lessons of Darkness

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.

September 25, 2010 Full Review Source: Suite101.com | Comment
Suite101.com

"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."

June 2, 2010 Full Review Source: BrianOrndorf.com | Comment
BrianOrndorf.com

click to read full review

March 26, 2010 Full Review Source: Movies for the Masses | Comment
Movies for the Masses

The arrogance and ignorance on display is truly amazing. Arrogance of its superiority over the audience's intellect and ignorance of filmmaking craft.

March 16, 2010 Full Review Source: CinemaBlend.com | Comments (3)
CinemaBlend.com

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.

March 12, 2010 Full Review Source: CNNRadio | Comment
CNNRadio

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.

November 21, 2009 Full Review Source: Sci-Fi Weekly | Comments (2)
Sci-Fi Weekly

Where is Fox Mulder when you need him?

November 19, 2009 Full Review Source: PopMatters | Comments (4)
PopMatters

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.

November 18, 2009 Full Review Source: Entertainment Spectrum | Comments (2)

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?)

November 13, 2009 Full Review Source: Capital Times (Madison, WI) | Comment (1)
Capital Times (Madison, WI)

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.

November 13, 2009 Full Review Source: Scotsman | Comment

... a sophisticated hoax ...

November 12, 2009 Full Review Source: Sacramento News & Review | Comment (1)
Sacramento News & Review

The first line in The Fourth Kind has Milla Jovovich calling herself an 'actress,' so we know right away the film is lying.

November 12, 2009 Full Review Source: Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) | Comments (7)
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Has out-Blair Witch'd The Blair Witch Project.

November 11, 2009 Full Review Source: Washington City Paper | Comment
Washington City Paper
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The Fourth Kind

It has some built in scares and although you lose a bit of interest in the second half of the film it still manages to be quite astonishing with the help of actual footage. Whether the footage was edited or not however, The Fourth Kind was put together pretty well.

November 30, 2011
Michael M.
Michael Miller

Super Reviewer

Occasional use of the "found footage" concept makes for a sometimes disturbing, but otherwise dull, psychological/science fiction thriller about alien attack. And this is no CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.When I Googled "The Fourth Kind", the fourth result was an article titled "'The

October 22, 2011
spielberg00
Alexander Diminiano

Super Reviewer

    1. Dr. Abigail Tyler: Someone or something came into my room. They took me away.
    – Submitted by James W (5 months ago)
    1. Dr. Abigail Tyler: [When Will get's stabbed] Ohhhh!
    2. Dr. Abigail Tyler: There's blood everywhere! Everywhere, it's all over me.
    – Submitted by James W (9 months ago)
    1. Dr. Abigail Tyler: In the end, what you believe is yours to decide.
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)
    1. 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.
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)

Latest News for The Fourth Kind

November 12, 2009:
Universal Settles Fourth Kind Lawsuit
Saying the movie undermines their credibility as news organizations, a handful of Alaskan newspapers...

November 5, 2009:
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