If we are to believe the premise of The Fourth Kind, the latest found footage thriller to merge "reality" with fictionalized storytelling, Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler uncovered a rash of alien abductions in the remote city of Nome, Alaska -- and paid a huge price in the process. She lost her husband, her daughter, and perhaps most significantly, her sanity. Even though she maintains the truth of what happened over the course of nine days in October of 2000, there is still a great deal of speculation over whether her audio and video recordings are nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

Now writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi has hired actress Milla Jovovich to play Tyler in a combination documentary/docudrama about the case, using the actual "evidence" the psychiatrist collected as a means of verifying her story. Throughout the course of this intriguing, and often inventive film, Osunsanmi uses split screen, allowing the "truth" to certify and accentuate the performances onscreen. Oh, and if you're wondering about the use of quotes, there are many online who are convinced that this entire story is a scam, a ruse carefully crafted by Universal to market a film employing an unusual, unorthodoxed style of storytelling.

Indeed, there are many who claim that Dr. Tyler does not exist. Others point out that the supposed "true stories" used during the course of the film cannot be real as they appear staged and too "shocking" to have sat around unexplained for nearly nine years. So there really is no Will Tyler, no mysterious death that keeps Abigail up at night. There's no "Tommy" (Corey Johnson), a man who takes his late night visits from the unexplained "owls" as a motive for a horrific crime. Or "Scott" (Enzo Clienti), who, when hypnotized by Dr. Tyler, recounts his visits from these mysterious being and suddenly develops unearthly powers. There's no Sumerian language expert, no rugged sheriff (Will Patton) or understanding fellow shrink (Elias Koteas) to question -- and eventually confirm -- what happens to our heroine.

Indeed, what The Fourth Kind turns out to be is a major meta-experiment in which the facts are not, the truth is far from it, and both are purposefully manufactured in order to support an already specious and otherwise entertaining concept. Movies about actual alien encounters have never been very successful, and Osunsanmi is convinced that this new, provocative means of selling the idea will work -- and indeed, it does. If you knew nothing about this film going in, treating it as nothing more than a fictionalized account of some true incidents that happened to some unlucky Alaskans, you'd find the whole experience horrific, and quite satisfying. The side-by-side comparison gives the main "action" sequences a cleverness and urgency that a lack of context -- real or fake -- fails to deliver.

Yet one can't shake the nagging sensation that, if successfully discovered to be a hoax, audiences will rapidly dismiss this movie as a smart-ass slap in the face. Indeed, the first five minutes of the movie are so earnest in their desire to prove the veracity of what you will see that to learn it may all be a put-on turns something intriguing into a rather mean in-joke. This doesn't mean that Osunsanmi doesn't have a skill at creating suspense and unusual approaches to dread, and we do get caught up in the increasing fear of the unknown. Still, The Fourth Kind might end up the most controversial film of 2009 -- and not for the reasons the film tries to forward. Alien abduction is one thing. Entertainment fraud is another.



Just heard about the fifth kind.