Movie Review: X-Files: I Want to Believe

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I gave it every opportunity to wow me, to bring on a sense of recollection, to slip me an in-joke. Instead, it just grossed me out and left me sorely disappointed.

When we rejoin our favorite FBI agents, Scully is working as a doctor in a Catholic hospital and clashing with one of the Fathers about the treatment of a dying boy (named Christian, in a obviously heavy metaphor). And Mulder is clipping articles from newspapers, tacking them up in a little room, and not shaving.

The FBI decides it wants Mulder back to help with an investigation into an agent's disappearance, and sends Agent Mosley Drummy (rapper/actor Xzibit) to seek out Scully. She's no longer working with Mulder or the FBI, but she dutifully tells Mulder that they need his help with a psychic priest (Billy Connolly) who claims to have visions of the missing agent and clues into a mutilated arm found in the snow. Mulder gets pulled into the case, which involves missing women, body parts, and Callum Keith Rennie doing his creepy best with a Russian accent.

This movie wants desperately to be a love story about Mulder and Scully, and it wants to be a story about faith and belief and reason. Instead, it comes off as a muddled mess. I never figured out if Mulder and Scully are actually living together - they're in a relationship, obviously, which also I find offputting, as I liked them better in their chaste courtship, but Scully walks into Mulder's house hesitantly. She doesn't knock, but she doesn't act like she lives there either. And while David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are excellent in these worn old roles and both look great, the change in their relationship and the circumstances in which they find themselves seem strained. They have chemistry, but I don't need to see them making out or snuggling in bed. That's never what their relationship was about during the show. Mulder making dirty jokes at Scully feels awkward and a little surreal.

Scully is having an awkward crisis of faith and wants to condemn Father Crissman - the psychic priest - for his bad deeds; Mulder wants to believe him; Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) doesn't know what to do. I never did figure out what her role was. Does she believe, like Mulder does? Or is she grasping at straws? Mulder and Scully have their old battle about belief and reason, and yet it feels stilted and old hat, like the characters should have moved beyond this, especially if they're sleeping together. (If they hadn't seen each other in a long time, then yes, I might have bought this. But none of this is ever clear, and it sure isn't the fault of any of the actors. Everyone cast does as good a job as they can. It's the script that fails them.)

This movie also wants desperately to appeal to those who don't know the show AND to those who do. But you have to pick one. Xzibit and Peet do the best they can with minimal roles - we could probably have done without both of them, honestly - but nothing really looks familiar to us. I don't recognize the halls Mulder and Scully walk at the FBI, or any of the agents. In fact, by the time we get one familiar face (and just one, if you don't count Rennie, who was originally up for the role of Krycek and later did two episodes of the show) it seems like the writers are pandering to the old Phile crowd. Like, look at this! You know this person!

That's the only in-joke we get. There's a reference to William, Scully and Mulder's son, and to Samantha, Mulder's sister, but the latter feels like a retread, because that issue felt resolved to me after the show had ended. To have it referenced in this movie felt like another moment to appease long-time fans, but instead it feels tacked on, to explain who Mulder is. But don't most people who would see this movie already know who he is and what spurs him? How many people are going to stumble into the theater without ever having seen the show?

Part of the problem is the fact that the show went on too long - probably two whole seasons - and killed off a lot of the charismatic characters we came to know and love or hate. The Lone Gunmen, Cancer Man, Krycek, Well-Manicured Man, Mr X, Deep Throat - all of them are missing. We don't even get Kersch. So the movie feels like a shadow of what the X-Files used to be.

And the story itself is gruesome and violent. I know the X-Files did some pretty horrific things over the course of the show, but this just seemed way too overdone - too slasher film. I covered my eyes several times and I found it uncomfortable in a way I couldn't easily put aside.

The movie also hands us a huge plot hole - Scully puts her faith in a science that the Catholic church has been vocal about rejecting in the real world. Yet in the movie that's not what the church is objecting to - it's upset that Scully wants to try to save this boy when they feel he should be left to die in peace. So we watch Scully wrestle with what she's doing - is she saving him? Is she making him into William? Is she causing him unnecessary pain? Does she believe in God or not? Her faith takes a beating but never feels real to me - it feels forced and heavy-handed from the beginning, when fans are used to a much more subtle treatment of her issues of faith (watch "Revelations" instead). In short, I missed the little green men.

Animals: Large dogs take a lot of abuse in the last third of this movie - they are shown mutilated in pictures and Mulder seriously wounds one who attacks him. I found this very disturbing on top of the violence done to the people. I actually considered walking out.

Overall: This movie felt like a X-Files film made by somebody who only knew a little bit about the show, and who wanted to gross us out with a slasher film. I was seriously disappointed, and while it was nice to see familiar characters, the plotline and the main characters' relationship has gone beyond the point of being either interesting or comfortable. I give it two roses out of five, and one of those roses is strictly because of the cast. Grab a DVD of Seasons Two or Three again and skip the film.