The Fourth Kind

A psychiatrist in Nome, Alaska, fears that some of her patients have been the victims of alien abductions. Carrying the title of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters one “kind” further, writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi claims that this is “a dramatization of real events.” But it looks more like a sophisticated hoax, with two casts: one of acknowledged actors playing the characters (Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton), the other posing as the “real” people in archival videotapes. This lets Osunsanmi pad out his running time by showing scenes twice, once allegedly real and once supposedly re-enacted, and it’s a clever ploy to fool the gullible with a threadbare and inconclusive story. “What you choose to believe is your decision,” we are told. The prudent will choose to believe that it’s all a crock.