Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind

The pic's claims grow wilder by the minute, and its power to persuade is undercut by narration scripted like a YouTube conspiracy film. For this skeptical but totally willing-to-believe viewer, Fifth Kind doesn't move the needle even a smidge.

As it goes on, this all becomes a marketing hook for an increasingly flaked-out fantasy.

This “Close Encounters” is overlong and rambling — more concerned with disconnected anecdotes than making a compelling case or telling an interesting story.

It’s a flurry of wild claims, dubious “experts,” Ad hominem attacks on doubt-sewers, aka “fascist demagogues” of “the national security (and media) state,” clip after clip of sci-fi movies mixed in with newsreel footage, cherry-picked “proof” via inter-title quotes from thinkers, scientists and others — read by narrator Jeremy Piven — and endorsements.