In the prologue to The Fourth Kind, an out-of-character Jovovich walks on screen to assure us that every scene is supported by documentation. She plays Nome, Alaska, psychologist Abigail Tyler, who begins to suspect extraterrestrial activity when several of her patients start experiencing the same nighttime disturbance. The dramatized material is intercut with documentary footage and audio recordings for corroboration, and so The Fourth Kind creates a cognitive disconnect between its creepy footnotes—particularly the videos of Dr. Tyler’s patients writhing under hypnosis—and its cheesy, atrociously acted reenactments. It’s hard not to shiver as Osunsamni interviews the ashen, scary-thin “real” Dr. Tyler; it’s hard not to laugh as the town’s crustier-than-thou sheriff (Patton) interrogates Jovovich.

In other words, this is a lackluster movie that derives its scares solely from the promise that the events it depicts actually happened. These chills dissipate quickly—as in, after about 25 seconds of Googling. The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity are structurally innovative enough to hold up with the foreknowledge that they’re fiction; The Fourth Kind, by contrast, feels like a con job, aggressive about trumpeting its veracity but slapdash and boring in other regards. (It’s The Mothman Prophecies told in the idiom of The Real World.) Forget the movie; the viral marketers can’t even design a decent fake Twitter page.

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