I Wanted To Believe In the New X-Files Movie
I guess sometimes doing your homework before watching a movie isn’t such a great idea. If I hadn’t, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more. According to an article I read in Entertainment Weekly back in May, X-Files: I Want To Believe was suppost to be a stand-alone story that didn’t deal whatsoever with the X-Files mythos, but where Mulder and Scully get on a case that makes Mulder question his beliefs. I assumed the idea was that the roles would be reversed and Mulder would find himself suddenly becoming skeptical of something that appeared supernatural, that he “wants to believe” but is finally having a hard time doing that. But that really isn’t what happened at all.
It’s actually a pretty decent thriller, if it just didn’t have “X-Files” in the title. It’s extremely low-key, gritty drama, and really tries to surprise, frighten, and keep you guessing without glamourous special effects or extravagant sets. Much of the movie takes place in the arctic, and dark, snowy and icy landscapes are really quite eerie, especially when given the film’s subject matter, which is about human organ harvesting. The bad guys are doing some truly horrifying stuff with human body parts, which is effective in creeping me out, but it isn’t satisfying because I’m all too aware that this is more than likely the last time we’ll see Mulder and Scully on a case.
The show has been off the air for several years now, and though I was never a die-hard fan I have seen the final episode, and I hoped this movie would give the series more closure than that convoluted and disappointing ending. But Chris Carter wanted to do a film you didn’t have to be a fan to see, and while I really do respect that, especially since the series usually had that stand-alone feel, I also wanted something a little bigger. And if not bigger, at least something to make my brain work a little harder.
I Want To Believe feels like a long episode, and not even one of the more interesting ones, at least in basic plot. It doesn’t have the twists and turns of some episodes I can recall that made me say, “woah, I had no idea that’s where they were going.” Mulder and Scully are a delight to watch as a team, and I’m sure fans will enjoy their banter and some of Mulder’s very witty comments. But for a casual viewer or someone who just wants to watch a good thriller (and Carter definitely made this movie for those people) it never gains much momentum and is only sometimes visually surprising, and only then in gross-out factor. There’s some moral questioning, but that mostly comes from a subplot about a young boy with a rare disease that Scully is trying to save, and it has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story. The kid was never on screen long enough for me to really care about him, and I was much more interested in Mulder, who I thought would get a real character-shift by the end of the film, and he never did.
The movie is about people’s beliefs, not about what really is “out there” and certainly not about aliens. I knew there would be no aliens going into it, and I was fine with that. But the only supernatural thing about it was a creepy ex-priest and convicted pedophile named Father Joe who claims to have visions from God, and these visions are all the FBI have to go on to look for a missing agent. They call Scully who brings in Mulder, and though neither are agents any longer, they both reluctantly get involved. As throughout the entire series, Mulder always believes this man really is psychic and Scully is always skeptical. I was sold that he was a real psychic from the very beginning, when one of his visions helped the FBI find a severed human arm in the ice. It didn’t matter that, at the time, it seemed this was unrelated to the missing agent. I knew it couldn’t be coincidence that he managed to find that, and if I had any doubt at all after that, I was certainly sold when he suddenly started crying blood. While the FBI starts thinking they should stop following this man’s rantings, Mulder keeps believing in him. His faith really doesn’t seem to waver, and I thought it would have been really neat if it did.
What if Father Joe started to lose us? What if we, the audience, are led to believe early on that this guy really isn’t psychic at all and Mulder is grasping at straws because he “wants to believe?” As is, the visions are so obviously real that it’s hard to understand why Scully is skeptical at all, and that makes it feel like an episode from the first season. Sure, this is a stand-alone, but the characters still have a nine-season progression that shouldn’t be ignored; they should move forward, not be stagnant. I really wanted Mulder to be led on what seemed like a wild goose chase, and then perhaps toward the end, it turns out Father Joe was right all along. Or maybe he wasn’t at all, and we could have an X-Files movie about a complete hoax, where nothing at all is supernatural. I don’t know. I don’t want to re-write this movie, but I just don’t think it has anything new to say.
It’s impressive what is done with very little, but I was bored, especially since this was the X-Files’ last hurrah. There’s really nothing theatrical about this; it could have been a TV movie. I don’t want to say that’s bad, because I think it’s what Carter was going for. The first X-Files movie tried to be a big budget version but the story was so convoluted it lost people. So this one tries to capture the essence of the series, and it does that visually, but the script was weak. It did what I was really afraid of; by the end, it looks like just one more episode of a show that we never thought we’d hear from again.
Tags: Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, I Want to Believe, Movie, Sci-Fi, X-Files