Milla Jojovich famously appeared several months ago in a trailer for a film to be released–strangely, portraying herself, rather than her character–promoting a new horror film released yesterday called The Fourth Kind. Leading up to the film’s release, a variety of articles and interpretations of the film were made; would it be an actual documentary film dealing with UFO witnesses and abductions? Perhaps a cheesy horror film that tries to cash in on similar releases (Paranormal Activity)? In all likelihood, could it be anything more than a hoax?

With the film’s release this weekend, the hubbub has yet to die down, and no doubt, it will be a good while before it does. One thing has changed, however; people are seeing the film, reviews are pouring in, and criticism of the film’s content, as well as its viral marketing campaign, are becoming prolific.

Prior to the film’s release, many avid web searchers (this one included) managed to find various websites that housed information about an Alaskan psychiatrist, Dr. Abigail Tyler, who is represented by Jovovich  (above, photo by Rita Molnár) in the film. At the time, I didn’t bother to look into how long the site had existed, or who the registrant information might point to, since doing Google searches for Abigail Tyler, as well as the so-called “Alaska Psychiatry Journal” led to very few results. Granted, much like the film Cloverfield, it seems that a majority of the movie-going blogging community enjoys solving the riddles presented by such obvious viral marketing campaigns, and a handful of them will continue investigating until they reach a dead end… which is exactly where the aforementioned website, as well as some other promotional information about the film, has gone.

“They are now gone,” reports Popular Mechanics writer Erik Sofge, who tells us they were “pulled offline when users posted publicly available registration records showing the sites launched in August of 2009. Those records don’t identify Universal (which released the movie) as the site’s owners, but for multiple sites to show up in the same month, just as promotion for the movie was getting started, is as circumstantial as it is damning.” Popular Mechanics famously “debunked” the 911 conspiracies (at very least to their own liking), and since then has tended to take a skeptical look at a variety of ambiguous claims that have appeared in years since. So far as Universal’s response, “The studio has stayed silent on the movie and its factual claims. And while the director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, is vested enough in this case to have personally interviewed Tyler, with clips of their conversation showing up throughout the movie, he hasn’t talked to anyone about the movie. No one is admitting anything, but all signs point to a hoax that backfired.” Read the entire Popular Mechanics article by clicking here.

Maybe the fact that film was an obvious hoax has less to do with the effect–desired or unintentional–that The Fourth Kind will have on its audiences. Mark Easter, International Director of Public Relations for MUFON, was interviewed by PM for their article, who said, “Even though this movie is written in Hollywood, and it’s sketchy, and has fake websites to promote it, people want to know about the phenomenon. MUFON sees it not as a half-empty cup. We look at it as half-full, and full to the point of overflowing. All we want is people to come out of the movie, and instead of looking at the sidewalk, and worrying about how their mortgage is going to get paid, they’re looking up at the sky. If we can get more people looking up at the sky, hopefully something will be seen, and they can get it into our database and let MUFON do our job.”

Is this really, by definition, a “hoax”, or is it merely Hollywood doing what Hollywood does: creating ambiguous hype for the ultimate purpose of entertainment? Looking at this from another perspective, do hoaxes actually help some UFO investigations? My fellow L.E.M.U.R. researcher Joshua P. Warren seems to feel that studying hoaxes may be a viable way to learn how to rule out fakes, which prompted him to establish a “hoax research” branch of L.E.M.U.R.’s ongoing investigations. To learn more about the Hoax Research Center, click here. Also, here is a link to the UFO Congress page detailing Joshua’s hoax research at this past year’s convention:

Joshua P. Warren Presents Physically Faking UFOs