34
Metascore
27 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanToo often, The Fourth Kind makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal.
- 50St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSt. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsTechnically proficient enough to keep us intrigued; but we shouldn't have to Google a movie to know if we were scared.
- 50Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaPhiladelphia InquirerSteven ReaA mildly scary, totally meaningless excursion into the realms of psychological horror and alien-abduction conspiracies.
- 42The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasTerminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.
- 40Village VoiceVillage VoiceA couple of modestly effective shocks lie in store.
- 40The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenThe Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenCombines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.
- 40VarietyVarietyEven the most gullible auds will be challenged to buy into the picture, billed as "based on the actual case studies" and, in any case, rendered rather boring by writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi ("The Cavern").
- 40Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovThis is a strange movie (it feels like a lost episode of the old Leonard Nimoy chestnut In Search of …) about strange people doing strange things.
- 38Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe Fourth Kind is a pseudo-documentary like "Paranormal Activity" and "The Blair Witch Project." But unlike those two, which just forge ahead with their home video cameras, this one encumbers its flow with ceaseless reminders that it is a dramatization of real events.
- Osunsanmi's big formal innovation tunrs out to be the split-screen pairing of patently bogus "archival" black-and-white video that shows alleged abductees undergoing hypnosis and color "reenactments" of same. Ultimately it's up to you, the viewer, to decide which is more boring.