CINEMA: The X-Files – I Want to Believe

One can only surmise that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are running low on funds, because there seems to be no other logical reason for them to reboot the X files franchise, ten years after the last film was released.

Here they reprise their roles of Mulder and Scully, the supernatural detectives searching for the definitive truth. Unfortunately, the case they are investigating – of abducted FBI agents and a paedophile priest (Billy Connolly) who claims to have ‘visions’ about the abductions—is really substandard, with no tension, sense of mystery or alien glamour, and would certainly never have made it as an episode of the original TV series.  Also, the pair often refer to incidents from their shared past, so if you were not a fan of the series you will have no way of knowing what they are talking about, which proves to be faintly annoying.

The plot never takes off and although there’s much talk of ‘monsters in the dark’ we never see any, making this a rather lacklustre thriller. Duchovny and Anderson do have good chemistry on screen, but their characters now seem jaded and faded, world-weary and rather flat, meaning you hardly care enough to want to believe. Ten years down the line and the world has turned its attention to other obsessions and worries, and what’s ‘out there’ is far less preoccupying than what’s happening on own door step.      Dee Pilgrim