Reel fake

Movie: "The Fourth Kind" Genre: Horror Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi Grade: C

Like "The Blair Witch Project," "Cloverfield," and recent box-office smash "Paranormal Activity," "The Fourth Kind" fakes the use of found footage for effect. The only fact-based material is that the town of Nome, Alaska exists, and people have gone missing there at an alarming rate since the 1960s.

Stripped of its mask of veracity, the movie has very little going for it. The scares lean so heavily on the archived footage scenes they become an outright gimmick, rather than a storytelling device.

Lost in the struggle for authenticity are two essentials of any successful horror flick. The first, characters that extend beyond two-dimensional clichés: The skeptical sheriff, the scholar with chilling insight, the creepy kid, they're all there. The second, an absorbing mythology: The aliens seem to terrorize the town for no other reason than that they feel like it. They also speak Sumerian for some reason. Don't ask.

Despite her leading role in "The Fourth Kind," Milla Jovovich speaks directly to the audience, out of character, in the very first scene of the movie. It's oddly reminiscent of one of those "The More You Know" public service announcements, except instead of telling us to read to children more often, Jovovich declares that the alien abduction movie we are about to watch is both "extremely disturbing" and "supported by archived footage." But, "The Fourth Kind" goes even further in an effort to convince the audience that what they're seeing is authentic.

Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi doesn't stop there when it comes to trying to convince the audience that what they're seeing is genuine. He stops just short of walking in front of the camera, stomping his feet and yelling, "This is real." It isn't.

The premise we're given is that a real woman, Dr. Abigail Tyler (Jovovich), has video and audiotapes that she gathered while conducting psychiatric research on several Nome, Alaska residents during the fall of 2000. As the narrative begins, Dr. Tyler begins to find that many of her patients are experiencing eerily similar nocturnal distress: sleep deprivation, paranoia and hazy recollections of being stalked by a white owl. She eventually suspects that alien abductions are to blame, and these aren't the kind of extra terrestrials that spread peace and love. Probing with sharp instruments is much more their style.

Throughout the rest of the film, during creepy moments where Dr. Tyler's patients appear to be either disturbed or somehow possessed by the alien life they've encountered, the film splits to two side-by-side versions of the same event, one "actual footage" and another "recreated" by actors. Osunsamni is also shown interviewing the "real" Abigail Tyler throughout the movie.

The side-by-side scenes do lead to a few moments of palpable tensions, particularly when the aliens come for Dr. Tyler herself. The "real" Abigail Tyler, an ethereal-looking creature, is creepy enough to warrant a heebie-jeebie or two. But by the third or fourth "archived footage" scene, you begin to realize that the grainy footage is staged. And when you realize that the only scenes that kept the film afloat were a ruse, it's hard to walk out of the theater not feeling duped.

ajdarpin@syr.edu