[The] ostensible archival footage proves so clunky and transparently phony that the entire gimmick collapses.

| Original Score: C- | Jan 5, 2011

When the director divides the screen into quadrants for his big finish, the effect is just laughable -- but then by that point, the movie is too.

| Original Score: 3.9/10 | Jul 4, 2010

Unfortunately, none of the subsequent noise is all that scary, and the striving for Paranormal Activity's buzz is shameless.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 11, 2009

[A] dull, clumsy little movie.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2009

No, no, no, no.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2009

Badly acted by everyone (including the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, who appears onscreen), this insipid jumble's idea of fright is incessant screaming.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Nov 6, 2009

Ultimately, the film's narrative segments are far too glossy and over-stylized, larded with ponderous scoring, obvious melodrama and split-screen visuals that offset the "reenactments" with the "real."

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 6, 2009

The mission here is to demonstrate how, in this explosive age of dubious information, cynicism can be quickly trumped by gullibility.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Unintentionally, laughably bad.

| Original Score: D | Nov 6, 2009

Nothing more than an elaborate light show, smoke and mirrors designed to lull the audience into believing that not only what they are seeing is real but that the filmmaking isn't some of the most amateurish of the year.

| Nov 6, 2009

The Fourth Kind has a clever gimmick and nothing more.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Osunsanmi's tricksy formal device simply reinforces our disbelief and invites ridicule.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 6, 2009

At a recent preview screening, the most common audience response to this nonsense was laughter, not gasps of horror.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 6, 2009

You'd do better downloading an old Art Bell show -- say, the one about the guy who put an alien in his freezer -- than investigating this evidence of subnormal activity.

| Nov 6, 2009

Without the true-story conceit, The Fourth Kind would be just another formula horror flick with a couple of passable jolts trying to hold a flimsy story together.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 6, 2009

May be humorless, paranoid nonsense, but its biggest failure is its inability to scare.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 6, 2009

In two climactic scenes, the screen goes fuzzy. For over a minute what we're watching is basically a television on the fritz. The only place that's ever been frightening is in the privacy of your living room.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 6, 2009

Liable to disappear mysteriously from cinemas.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 6, 2009

Mr. Osunsanmi's chutzpah exceeds his skill.

| Nov 5, 2009

Writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi attempts an Orson Welles-like confluence of "real" and imagined that might have worked had he gotten out of the way more, literally and figuratively.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2009