The X-Files: I Want to Believe

3/4 stars

I wrote of the first X-Files movie that it was enjoyable because it was basically just another episode of the television show, but with a big budget and amazing special effects. This one is enjoyable, despite the lack of those things, because it is just another episode, in movie form, six years after the show went off the air. I think the reason that reviews so far have been fairly negative is that people don't understand what the movie is supposed to be. This is a distinctly un-summer film. It is, at the same time, a movie that could almost only have been made under the X-Files brand. I was initially frustrated with the lack of a major ad campaign in support of this movie; my old TV fan instincts kicked in and it felt important to me that the movie have a huge opening and impressive box office performance. That seems not to have been among its creators' ambitions. The X-Files: I Want to Believe is more low key, a lean crime thriller, with a supernatural twist. The most interesting thing about it, and what makes it so uniquely X-Files, is how they've resisted the urge to make it big. In a universe where supernatural phenomena are already established, it's possible to portray such things without having to go over the top. The movie could do more, could've continued the show's mytharc plotline in spectacular fashion, but it's entirely competent at what it does do. The case itself, and its emotional repercussions on Mulder and Scully are fascinating by themselves. This second X-Files film isn't a big movie, but it is a good one.

Written July 27, 2008.