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Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Milla Jovovich stars in 'The Fourth Kind," a cheesy overacted film about alien encounters.

I love it when movies pretend to document "real" events, and when these fake documentaries are set in the horror genre it can churn out awesome results-not that long ago I reviewed the amazing "Paranormal Activity." But when these kinds of films crash, they crash like no other. "The Fourth Kind" exemplifies this better than any other.

"The Fourth Kind" is an odd one. Right from the get-go, Milla Jovovich announces, "I am the actress Milla Jovovich," and further continues to explain that what you will spend the next 90 or so minutes watching is based entirely on real events documented by real archived footage of people experiencing real paranormal events. Unfortunately, five minutes of research into the authenticity of the film show it to be nothing more than a real sham. You find out that the residents of Nome, AK have no idea about the alleged "alien abductions" that the film tries so hard to make you believed actually happened-according to an Anchorage, AK reporter, the town's police has never heard of such events. And further, you'll find that the very person Jovovich claims to be portraying, Abigail Taylor, never even existed in Nome.

Now, all of this isn't a big deal, right? It's supposed to be a fictional film that's supposed to scare, who cares if it's all made up? Well, all would be fine if the movie only mentioned that it was "true story" once. Instead throughout this atrocity we get reminders laid before by the film's creators. When we see actor Will Patton, a subtitle pops up informing us of the fact that that is actually "Will Patton, actor." It's incredibly annoying. I know that Will Patton and the others are actors, you don't have to keep reminding me.

But throwing all that nonsense out of the window leaves the audience with nothing more than a shell of a half-complete film. The film's story outside of the pseudo-documentary features is about a psychologist, the aforementioned Abigail Taylor, who says her clients all report waking up at 3 a.m. with a sense of wrong and seeing an owl outside their window staring at them. And that's the plot.

Now, all of that actually sounded interesting to me and I still hated the film. First, the acting is horrendous. Think soap operas have bad acting? You will be amazed at the level of awful this film's actors "achieve." It's packed to the brim with inane melodrama that is boring, and trust me, that's a compliment. It reeks of gimmick, and isn't horrifying whatsoever.

This movie was utter trash. Though on a good note, "The Fourth Kind" could potentially be one of the better comedy films I have seen recently. Regardless, don't see this movie.

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