Mulder is hiding and Scully is a doctorin a Roman Catholic hospital. When an FBI agent goes missing and the only cluescome from the visions of a disgraced Catholic priest, someone in the agency hasthe good sense to call the old team out of retirement. Scully knows whereMulder lives, and Mulder is the FBI’s only expert in the paranormal, even ifthey had succeeded in silencing him.
That’s the premise of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, a disappointing coda to Chris Carter’slong-running television series. Believe isn’toverly long but sometimes seems that way. It rambles and lacks the tight dramaof the show’s best episodes. An interesting idea or two stumble along with themovie as it zigzags down the icy back ro
One thing Believehas in abundance is moody atmosphere. The lonely countryside is snowbound andwrapped in the gray itchy mantle of winter. Only a little less chilly are theemotional bonds between the two protagonists, who still call each other bytheir last names. Scully is tired of gazing into the darkness alongside Mulder.Obsessed by the loss of his sister, abducted by aliens years before, Mulder haslearned to see in the dark.
“The X-Files” TV series traded on the growingsuspicion that we are being lied to: that the government keeps secrets andcovers skeletons under a topsoil of lies, science crops reality to thedimension of a digital snapshot, and the media views the world through an apertureas narrow as a prison-cell window. The problem with “The X-Files” was that itran for too many seasons and into too many tangents, with monster-of-the-weekepisodes amid the larger conspiracy theory of aliens in league with the rulers ofour world.
I Want to Believe suffers from mission fatigue. Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully(Gillian Anderson) both seem weary, albeit that may be a function of theirroles as ex-agents whose throats became sore after years of whistle blowing foran audience that was deaf as well as dumb. Urgency is lacking, even as bodiesand body parts surface on the icy fields and the protagonists debate theveracity of a pedophile priest, confined to a group home for sex offenders. Howcould God speak through such a broken man, wonders Scully, the skepticalCatholic. For Mulder the question is less important than the reality of the oldman’s insights and the vague itch he feels to get back into the paranormalgame.
