It’s been a while since we had anything to report on The Fourth Kind, the fact-based alien encounter thriller from director Olatunde Osunsanmi starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton and Elias Koteas. Today, however, we have some news, as several websites are reporting Universal will be releasing the film, which premiered in the U.S. November 6 2009, on Region 1/North American DVD and Blu-Ray on March 16 2010. According to TheHDRoom, bonus features aside from deleted scenes are essentially nonexistent for both formats. From TheHDRoom.com:

Universal Studios Home Entertainment will bring the psychological thriller The Fourth Kind to Blu-ray Disc and DVD on March 16. In the film, Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil) stars as a psychologist who discovers frighting similarities amongst her patients in regards to alien abductions. It was released on November 6, 2009 theatrically and made $45.5 million domestically.

On Blu-ray, The Fourth Kind will be shown in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio at 1080p resolution. 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is included as well as D-BOX Motion Control support. Bonus features are incredibly slim with deleted scenes on the Blu-ray and DVD. The Blu-ray will also include My Scenes bookmarking and a Pocket Blu App, but that’s it.

The Fourth Kind on Blu-ray will retail for $36.98 with Amazon.com pricing expected to be in the $27 range when the pre-order goes live.

As of yet, there is no word on a Region 2/European DVD release. Meanwhile, check out some new medium-res promotional stills of Milla as Abigail “Abbey” Tyler in the film at our gallery, courtesy of HollyB.

Updated Photo Albums:

• Film Work > ‘The Fourth Kind’ (2009) Promotional Stills

Not a whole lot of news to update with today. However, we’ve just uploaded the three promotional clips of Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler in The Fourth Kind to our media archive. While the clips are not new (i.e. they have been showcased here before), they are in good quality and definitely worth a look. As most of you will know, The Fourth Kind is now playing in U.S. theaters. Enjoy!

All new video clips are in .MOV format, which is playable in e.g. QuickTime and VLC. Please remember you must be a registered and logged in media archive user to access our collection of video clips; unlogged users will not be able to view said material. Registration at our media archive is free and only takes a moment. Thank you.

New Video Albums:

• Film Work > ‘The Fourth Kind’ (2009) Promotional Movie Clips

Don’t forget to check out Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail “Abbey” Tyler in The Fourth Kind, a fact-based alien encounter thriller from director Olatunde Osunsanmi. The movie, also starring Elias Koteas and Will Patton, is a dramatization of mysterious events and disappearances in Nome, Alaska, and premiered today in U.S. theaters! Go get your movie tickets now via TheFourthKind.net.

Unfortunately, reviews on the film have thus far been rather negative, though Milla has been commended for her portrayal of the psychologist investing the Nome disappearances. The Fourth Kind currently has a 17% “positive” review rating at review collection website Rotten Tomatoes, which has earned it a pretty solid “Rotten” rating. Shame, but we’re going to see it anyway!

As we reported earlier, Olatunde Osunsanmi’s fact-based alien encounter thriller The Fourth Kind closed Screamfest 2009 in Los Angeles, CA on October 25. The first reviews are now beginning to surface online — and they are certainly coming in mixed. Below is a compilation of excerpts from some of the professional reviews that have been published.

From The State News:

Jovovich does an admirable job as the re-enacted Tyler, but the other acting in the film is unintentionally funny. Will Patton from Remember the Titans plays the sheriff of Nome, and his character redefines the meaning of stupidity by ignoring everyone around him and randomly shouting irrelevant orders across rooms. [...] Osunsanmi’s execution simply doesn’t match his ambition, and although I see the goal of making the audience wonder what is real, the “real” footage isn’t convincing enough. There’s not enough focus in Osunsanmi’s story and not enough satisfaction in the “scares” he provides; there’s too much of the “real” Tyler sniveling over the soundtrack. Do yourself a favor, stop counting at Close Encounters of the Third Kind and watch Steven Spielberg’s classic from 1977.

From Empire Movies:

I’m not going to get into too many other details about The Fourth Kind because it’s probably better that you go into this movie with an open mind or at least not any exaggerated expectations. All I can say, for myself, is that The Fourth Kind scared me like no movie has in a long, long time. It’s more terrifying than The Exorcist, more chilling than Paranormal Activity and more shocking than the last ten minutes of Se7en.

From Film Threat:

The film uses the purported archival footage as a recurring device. Osunsanmi splits the screen in an attempt to depict the making of narratives in psychiatry, while he cops out during the film’s shocking moments, in which the footage gets conveniently distorted with static. (Apparently, the aliens can control the analog signals in the cameras.) The recreated footage, with Jovovich posing as a doctor, features actors convulsing as if they were assigned to mimic a seizure victim in acting class. We can’t knock the film for attempting to be experimental, but we can for subjecting us to such bad results.

The Fourth Kind stars Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler opposite Elias Koteas and Will Patton, and premieres in U.S. theaters November 6.

Update Nov 5: Updated with excerpts from additional 5 online reviews.

From Cinematical

The main problem with the film may be that audiences are just plain too sophisticated to buy into its combination of actual and staged material; even if it’s believable to release therapy sessions and private interviews, much less ones where strange and violent behavior occurred, there’s just no way that the police would allow filmmakers to include actual shots of a man killing himself and his family. Meanwhile, the rest of the movie is so aggressively over-stylized that you get the impression even the filmmakers don’t quite know what they’re doing when they keep the camera constantly moving, flip, shift and juggle “actual” images with reenactment footage, and generally overplay the falseness of the acting footage as some extreme counterpoint to the real stuff.

From Canadian Press

The film manages to pull off a couple of jump-cut shockers, despite the disparity between Jovovich’s sleep-inducing performance and the wild overacting of the “real” Dr. Tyler. Supporting actors Elias Koteas and Will Patton clearly took their cues from the latter, though. One wonders again if their hammy dramatizations are supposed to function as commentary on the “Unsolved Mystery” School of Acting. If so, the intent, like everything else in this half-baked mess, is lost in the slog.

From The Huffington Post

The Fourth Kind was one of the scariest things I’ve seen in years. I’m going out to see it again, which tells you how much I care whether or not it’s a hoax. With the exception of Patton’s performance, I enjoyed every thrilling minute of it. Like Drag Me to Hell did earlier this year, The Fourth Kind made horror fun again. God, I hope it’s a trend. (And considering the disappointing performance of Saw VI and the success of Paranormal Activity, that seems to be the case.)

From Fangoria

I’m all for verisimilitude, but this gets dull fast. Just as you’re sick of it, a half hour into the film, we’re still getting split screens of ‘real’ persons and the actors playing them, saying the same things (with onscreen titles like the character’s name and “AN ALIAS”.) You finally wanna scream, “OKAY, WE GET IT–THIS IS SUPPOSEDLY A TRUE STORY. NOW START THE DAMN MOVIE!” [...] Jovovich does the best she can with a hopeless part–knitting her eyebrows and looking pensive. This movie is even slower than Christopher Walken’s COMMUNION!

From Flick Filosopher

Alas, as is very frequently the case with movies with spectacular setups, The Fourth Kind can’t manage to carry it through to an entirely satisfactory finish, partly because eventually it runs into the limits of what we know is really real, and partly because from so histrionic a beginning, it has nowhere to go but into the stratosphere of melodrama from there. No spoilers: suffice to say that eventually it becomes impossible to suspend our disbelief as we have been so willing to do all along.

More The Fourth Kind clips! Check out a third movie clip of Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler in the Olatunde Osunsanmi-directed alien encounter thriller, as embedded below courtesy of Cinema Blend. Looks pretty promising, no? As always, the new clip is mildly spoiler-y, so if you wish to remain 100% spoiler-free, you’ll want to skip this one. Don’t forget to check out the two earlier clips from the film if you haven’t yet!

The Fourth Kind is a fact-based alien encounter thriller about a series of mysterious events and disappearances in Nome, Alaska. Milla Jovovich stars as Dr. Abigail Tyler opposite Will Patton and Elias Koteas. The Fourth Kind premieres in U.S. theaters November 6.

Three days ago, we reported of the first The Fourth Kind movie clip at MSN Movies. Now, MTV.com has exclusively revealed a second clip for the film, which has been embedded below for viewing. The clip is also available in HD 720p over on the MTV website. As always, if you wish to stay 100% spoiler-free as to the contents of the film, we recommend you skip this clip.

The Fourth Kind is a fact-based alien encounter thriller about a series of mysterious events and disappearances in Nome, Alaska. Milla Jovovich stars as Dr. Abigail Tyler opposite Will Patton and Elias Koteas. The Fourth Kind premieres in U.S. theaters November 6.

A first movie clip from Olatunde Osunsanmi’s upcoming alien encounter thriller The Fourth Kind has been revealed by MSN Movies. The roughly one-minute clip features only Milla Jovovich as Dr. Abigail Tyler, and is mildly spoilery, so if you wish to remain 100% spoiler-free, you might want to skip this one. The video cannot be embedded here at this point, so please head over to MSN Movies to watch it!

Update: Embeddable version of the clip via MovieWeb: