Film Review: The X-Files

Published on Thursday 31 July 2008 19:33

This latest spin-off from the TV series is a poor affair that will disappoint newcomers and fans of the original alike.

David Duchovny's Fox Mulder character is brought in from the cold in Chris Carter's reheated concoction – but to little effect

THE new X-Files movie begins in much the way you'd expect a new X-Files movie to begin: with discredited FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) coaxed out of various states of exile/retirement. They're being drafted in to help their former employers solve a missing persons case: a female agent has disappeared, but a psychic priest (played by Billy Connolly) claims to have seen her in a vision. It goes without saying that the FBI has some doubts about his credibility, especially since he's also a paedophile who has, as a disgusted Scully puts it, "buggered 37 altar boys". It also goes without saying that Mulder is the only one who believes him, which naturally leads him to uncover a vast conspiracy, this time involving – spoiler alert! – a secret society of fedora-wearing, whip-wielding archaeologists that have used ancient religious artefacts such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail to control the world since the 1930s…

Okay, that last bit is made up, but considering the way Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull strayed into X-Files territory with that goofy alien ending, it seems that no plot twist is too outlandish when there's a built-in fanbase ready to be exploited by the studios. The most surprising thing about the cumbersomely titled The X-Files: I Want to Believe, however, is that it's not actually outlandish enough. Sure it has its idiotic moments involving severed limbs and spooky coincidences, but they're in service to a film that is quite astonishingly and quite unforgivably dull. The sly mix of suspense, paranoia and nonsense that made the show such a hit is almost entirely absent.

That's odd considering the first film, 1998's The X-Files, understood that dynamic. Directed by Rob Bowman and released between seasons five and six, it took what was good about the show and blew it up into a slick piece of blockbuster entertainment that not only worked as a film, but helped reinvigorate the series for a little while. This new film, co-written and directed by The X-Files creator Chris Carter, arrives six years after the show petered out, and watching it is like experiencing the cinematic equivalent of a high school reunion: it may stoke a few pleasant memories, but mostly it serves as a harsh reminder that certain things just shouldn't be revisited, especially when there's no real reason for doing so.

Unlike the first film, this one is being billed as a stand-alone story that requires no prior knowledge of The X-Files to enjoy it, which is ironic since the TV-like scope of its visuals and the complete absence of a gripping plot ensure that any appeal the film has relies almost exclusively on the goodwill generated by its two leads, both of whom slip back into their roles with relative ease. Still, even though Duchovny and Anderson are both hugely appealing actors and do a decent job of making us believe that we're catching up with the Mulder and Scully of old, there's still something a little off about them. Casual viewers or X-Files virgins may well wonder why, for instance, half-way through the film their relationship suddenly appears to be more intimate than it did at the start, especially when jarring reference is made to a child. There are also lots of references to Mulder's missing sister (a running plot device in the show), and a last minute appearance by another X-Files regular that just smacks of desperation. It's bad writing and suggests a filmmaker torn between needing to make a film for a broad audience and wanting to make something purely for the fans. That Carter has failed to reconcile the two is perhaps reflected in the film's poor showing at the US box office last weekend.

There's certainly not much to be gained from a rather lame subplot in which Scully, having left the FBI, is working as a doctor in a hospital run by the Catholic Church. She's battling to save a potentially terminally ill boy, despite meeting resistance from her religious-minded hospital board. Meanwhile, she's been asked to bring Mulder "in from the cold" on the promise that all will be forgiven if he helps the FBI find their missing agent (since being forced out he's been lying low in a snowy, isolated compound collecting newspaper clippings and growing a beard). Once they're back in the fold, the film morphs into a fairly conventional serial killer-style police procedural, one that conveniently uses paranormal activity to get itself out of every narrative corner it backs itself into. Performance wise, Connolly is OK, bringing enough ambiguity to the role to make you doubt his character's clairvoyance claims. Amanda Peet supplies a little sexual frisson as a younger FBI agent in the Scully mould, but the film never bothers to develop this. Instead it works its way towards a series of anticlimaxes which, in some cases, Carter can't even be bothered to show on screen.

In the end, devotees might want to believe that their beloved X-Files is still a viable source of entertainment, but it's not. The truth, I'm afraid, is out there.