An increasingly popular trend within the genre of horror movies is a deviation from the gruesome, frightening, Hollywood horror norm. Many recent films have instead taken far more original approaches to try to terrify viewers. In this respect, writer and director Olatunde Osunsanmi’s new film, The Fourth Kind, undeniably succeeds.

This fact-based film begins with an introduction by Milla Jovovich, who plays protagonist Dr. Abigail Tyler. Jovovich explains that she is an actress in this re-enactment and that the viewers must decide whether or not they believe what they are going to see. She ends this prologue by advising that “what you are about to see is very disturbing.” Her warning is certainly not an exaggeration.

The film takes place in Nome, Alaska, and centers around Tyler, a recently widowed psychiatrist who is conducting case studies on residents who have all exhibited abnormal sleeping habits. The eerie similarity between the reports of these people is that they have all woken up in the middle of the night to see a white owl staring at them through their window. In an attempt to uncover the underlying cause of this recurrence, Tyler begins placing her patients under hypnosis; the results are startling and, as Jovovich herself states, very disturbing. As the heroine delves further into the mystery, she soon begins to theorize that the forces behind it are extraterrestrial, and consequently becomes a victim of the strange occurrences as well.

The genius of The Fourth Kind lies not in its storyline, which could be seen as a cliché alien abduction plot, but in the way in which the film is executed. Osunsanmi makes full use of the fact that the plot is (supposedly) based on actual events by displaying the most disquieting segments of the re-enactment simultaneously with actual archival footage of the same events. Moreover, the film is punctuated by brief excerpts of an interview between Osunsanmi and a woman who is purportedly Tyler herself. This is by far the most noteworthy aspect of the film, as the mere thought that the displayed events truly occurred is scary enough; to see them in conjunction with the acted sequences is utterly spine-chilling.

Although the originality of this aspect of the film is commendable, as are the technical and cinematographic elements that enhance it, the film has problems on various other fronts. Some of these problems are obvious while viewing the movie, while others only appear in hindsight. One large problem lies in the acting. Jovovich’s performance as the protagonist is solid; however, her beauty almost seems caricatured when concurrently shown with the bona fide Tyler, whose wan, withered face makes for a distractingly peculiar contrast. Although this clearly has no bearing on Jovovich’s acting capacity, the believability of certain supporting actors can be called into question. In particular, the secondary role of Sheriff August (Will Patton) is at times so melodramatic that it provokes laughter during what would otherwise be a tense scene.

These flaws were certainly noticeable throughout, yet the film itself was often so engrossing and unsettling that they do not seem important, at least while viewing the movie. Interestingly, the movie’s biggest flaw did not even cross my mind until hours after I viewed it. This flaw lies in the plotline, which is ultimately a variation on countless other predictable and unoriginal horror films. However, one certainly could not call this film unoriginal as a whole; in reality, it merely consists of an overused plotline thoroughly embellished with ingenious mechanisms of fear to the point that its banality seems to disappear.

This is not at all to say that The Fourth Kind is not worth viewing ­— in fact, quite the opposite. The problems listed above barely, if at all, detracted from the unnerving and stunning impact that the film had on me while viewing it. It certainly stands out among the myriad “scary” movies released in the past decade that are not scary at all. Not only is this movie disturbing, but the real, fact-based feature of the movie plagues the audience with the question of whether what is being shown actually did occur. Even though it retrospectively seems like a somewhat silly film, it was certainly entertaining while it lasted.