The X-Files: I Want To Believe

Director: Chris Carter

Some files are meant never to be closed, and many would argue that The X-Files fits that category. Six years after the series ended and 10 years after the last film, Scully and Mulder take barely a scene between them to get The X-Files back in its rhythm. It isn’t the best case that the two have solved, it isn’t the most difficult, it isn’t even the best of science fictions, and it barely fits into the category of paranormal, but it is perhaps the closest look at two characters that TV audiences have loved for years now.

Older and wiser, less flashier and argumentative, Scully (Anderson) and Mulder (Duchovny) here are retired from the FBI and at peace. Yes, they are living together, and the film just lets that drop, casually. After all those years of speculation about whether they would do “it”, when they would do “it”, this matter-of-factness sets the pace for the rest of this adventure. This Scully and Mulder are not here to impress us — that battle was long won— they are here to be themselves, do what they believe in. And if you think about it, the Scully and Mulder we know would go about their love in their own way, at their own pace.

More than the search for the FBI agent, the film at many levels is about the larger question of faith, and how far one would go for it. The film pits stem-cell therapy against religion, is about scientists taking organ transplant far enough to play god, about a serial paedophile priest who prays with the belief that God will forgive him, about Scully debating reason and emotion in trying to save a dying patient, and about Mulder who seeks no reason at all for his beliefs.

There are many things stunningly out of place. Such as a top-notch surgeon like Scully “googling” to find out about stem-cell therapy, and apparently using the information on...