"I am actress Milla Jovovich," the star says, directly to the audience, as she introduces her new movie, "The Fourth Kind."
And those are pretty much the last true words out of her mouth in this gimmicky, "Yes, this really happened" alien-abduction horror hooey. It's a film whose writer-director is so heavily invested in making us buy into it as "fact" that he wastes screen time on claims of veracity when he should have invested his movie with a few more genuinely hair-raising moments.
Because even if his and his star's pants are on fire this very moment, "The Fourth Kind" still manages a few good frights.
"Close Encounters" fans will recognize the title. Alien sighting, close encounter of the first kind; making friends and phoning home, close encounter of the third kind; kidnapped, probed, poked and freaked out of your mind? That's "a close encounter of the fourth kind."
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Jovovich plays a Nome, Alaska, psychotherapist whose husband has died and whose sleep-deprived patients are telling her chilling, cryptic stories of owls and abduction when she puts them under hypnosis.
The conceit that writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi milks for all it's worth is that the "real" Dr. Abigail Tyler is shown in a video interview with the director for Chapman University, in which a cadaverous-looking actress narrates her story, her encounters with patients who flipped out and even killed themselves over what they'd experienced.
Osunsanmi, a protégé of Joe "Smokin' Aces" Carnahan, uses split screens to show "real" police video and "real" hypnosis-session video playing out opposite his actors re-enacting those moments. With "found video" again igniting the horror-movie market, these hucksters must be kicking themselves that the long-shelved "Paranormal Activity" came out a month before this one, stealing their video-veritas thunder.
