Watching The X-Files: I Want to Believe is like going out with a former lover. There was something there once, but now it is long gone, and you sit there in awkward silence, politely waiting for the check to come, or in this case, the credits to roll.
It’s been six years since The X-Files quietly left the airwaves and 10 years since the last X-Files movie.
The cultish fanaticism over the once great show has been all but replaced by the fervor over Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes or any of the other numerous mythological/sci-fi dramas that plague the modern boob tube. The public, and it seems many of the fans, have moved on and found new shows to waste their time obsessing over.
But, when the first trailers for I Want to Believe popped up this year, there was a significant buzz building for the return of special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. As the film’s title suggests, people wanted to believe that they could fall in love with The X-Files again.
Well, here’s the bad news: The love is gone, replaced by, at best, a minor crush.
The film is your standard thriller with a missing person plot, mysterious clues and creepy serial killer-like villains with hidden motives.
X-Files creator and I Want to Believe director Chris Carter, along with co-writer Frank Spotnitz, tried so hard to bring the show to the masses that they have whitewashed it into banal oblivion.
There is little here that makes this The X-Files other than the names of the characters and a few touches of freaky science. It makes you wish they would have either gone back into the X-Files plot, or just moved on completely and given us a new story.
The plot concerns former FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and their return to the supernatural investigations that they once specialized in. Six years after The X-Files branch of the FBI that Mulder and Scully headed was shut down, both agents have moved on–Mulder still obsessing over aliens in shut-in mode (complete with uncomfortable facial hair) and Scully, now a full-fledged doctor, trying to keep her Catholic faith as she tries to cure a dying child in her care.
An FBI agent has gone missing and the only clues are coming from a convicted child molester and priest (natch), played with unexpected depth by comedian Billy Connolly, who claims that his psychic insights into the investigation are handed down from God.
At first the FBI doesn’t believe that he has special powers, but once the man starts crying blood even the most die-hard skeptic might reconsider their nay-saying.
It comes as no surprise that the investigation leads the heroes into what should be surprising places. Body parts start showing up buried under layers of ice and the clues start adding up until Mulder and Scully use their expertise (or should I say, the screenwriters’ heavy-handed clue dropping) to find the secrets of a recent rash of kidnappings.
I won’t spoil the motives behind the villains, but just know that if you have taken even one course on human anatomy you will be throwing your hands up in disbelief. It’s bad when a sci-fi movie forces you to consider the faulty science behind it.
With that said, the film feels fresh in that it doesn’t rely on modern thriller contrivances. The action is cerebral. It ignores guns and explosions in favor of character revelations and intelligent discussions on faith and what it takes to truly believe–whether that belief is in God, the rekindling of lost love (Spoiler Alert: Mulder and Scully became a couple in the six years since we last saw them and have since split up), or that science can save a loved one from their inevitable death.
There is a good movie here that is trying to break free of the X-Files moniker. If Chris Carter would have made a non-X-Files film starring the same actors, but giving us new characters with the same struggles, he might have had something. But as it stands, the obligatory references to the series that most people have forgotten and the routine sci-fi 101 dialogue only distract us from what should have been the true story of people trying to make it in a world that rarely makes sense.
The X-Files: I Want to BelievePlaying now**1/2