The vogue for verite spooks continues with "The Fourth Kind," but unlike the understated stylistic rigor of the first-person-fashioned "Paranormal Activity," this alien abduction showpiece about unexplained events in Nome, Alaska, doth protest its bona fides too much.
Presented as a cinematic re-creation of traumatic, mysterious occurrences -- suicides, stalking owls, demonic-sounding recordings -- surrounding sleep-deprived patients of psychologist Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich), writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi attempts an Orson Welles-like confluence of "real" and imagined that might have worked had he gotten out of the way more, literally and figuratively. As in, there's ludicrous video footage of a solemn Osunsanmi interviewing a gaunt, horror-stricken Tyler, as well as overwrought dramatizations featuring Tyler, a friendly, doubting colleague (Elias Koteas) and an all-skeptical sheriff (Will Patton).
