The opening shot of I Want To Believe is of a full moon, wisps of cloud scudding across its brightly illuminated surface as it rises… only, it really isn’t the moon. It’s a portion of the moon, enlarged and cropped so that both its blight and its beauty—its craters and its light—are exaggerated. It’s an effective metaphor for this second X-Files film.

An indeterminate number of years have gone by since Mulder and Scully last worked a case; it might have been ten, it might have been five. It might have been two… it doesn’t matter much. What we do know is that Mulder and Scully have married and split, have lost a child, have left the FBI. Scully has gone back to her practice, and Mulder is now “wanted” by the FBI as a renegade… and yet isn’t putting much effort into hiding. He is, I think, actually living in the house where he was raised.

As the film opens, a woman is stalked and brutally assaulted in her garage in the dead of night, while at the same time—in broad daylight, in another field of snow—a team of FBI agents is being led on a manhunt by a man who seems to be in a trance. Are these events occurring simultaneously? If not, how are they related? What will happen to the woman? What are the agents looking for in that field of snow, exactly? It’s an opening that’s befitting of The X-Files, entirely in keeping with the tone and style of the TV series.

That’s either an ill omen, or a promise of the fun to come… depending on how much of an X-Files fan you are—or were.

I was a middling X-Files fan who never managed to pay much attention to the series once Mulder and Scully hooked up. The show was far more interesting to me when the duo were not an item, per se, and when the episodes were more invested in the gimmicks and spookiness than in the romance. In part, that probably accounts for why my response to I Want To Believe is rather cool.

This time out, Mulder and Scully are both apart and yet together: they’re separated, but they have a history. They reteam to work and sleep together, but they have inevitable differences, philosophical commitments, and priorities—so they remain separated, too. It’s an odd tension, one that almost works.

The mystery involves missing women, unattached body parts, and a supposedly psychic ex-pedophile priest: that wild-eyed guy leading the FBI crew in that field of snow. Meanwhile, Scully is a surgeon at a Catholic hospital, and deals with a young critically-ill patient in need of ethically-complex pioneering medical care.

As the title of the film suggests, this story is absolutely laden with issues of faith, belief, and proof. Scully’s medical ethics are so challenged that she turns to the most unlikely of sources for affirmation; Mulder’s belief in the paranormal is equally challenged; skeptics and priests alike are held up to intense scrutiny as dogmatists; even pedophiles cry out to God in pain, doubt, and a plea for faith. Symbols of religion abound. Scully is almost constantly surrounded by crucifixes. Priests and nuns are around almost every corner… at least, the corners behind which ghouls are not hiding. “The facts give us hope,” one character says; and yet director Chris Carter—as well as the series’ legacy—telegraphs that hope rests on faith as much as facts. We need the Scullys, and we need the Mulders.

At one point, Scully sulks and Mulder asks what’s wrong. “I’m cursing God for all these cruelties,” she replies, recounting the facts of the medical case she’s supervising. Mulder urges her off to sleep, advising, “Let me curse God for a while.” Meanwhile, Mulder’s investigation literally summons up the Apostle Paul’s observation that, as we walk through this life, we only know in part: we only see “as through a glass darkly.” It’s potentially heady stuff, right up there with some of my favorite thematic content from the show’s early seasons.

But then there’s that exaggerated moon. Too often, Carter’s script jumps off into narrative conveniences that break the dramatic tension. How is it that Scully’s hospital and Mulder’s home are both within an hour or so drive of all of the crime scenes? Why does a certified surgeon research stem cell therapy via Google? Did her medical journal subscriptions lapse? Why do Carter’s FBI agents rarely exhibit the intelligence one might expect of an actual FBI agent? When Mulder’s new partners are surprised that a witness wasn’t tricked by their ruse, I can only respond: it doesn’t take a psychic to recognize yellow crime-scene tape.

By the time Agent Drummy barks, “Somebody find the lights!”—and certainly by the time the rushed climax concludes with all the monsters conveniently herded into a box—you might just feel like Mulder. “Trust being what it is,” don’t expect too much of anyone… or any movie. The spookiness here is too tightly leashed.

I Want To Believe is rated PG-13 for “violent and disturbing content and thematic material.” The words I might use would be “moderately gruesome.” The tension is derived from real-world concerns like stalking, female imprisonment, and the random appearance of severed limbs—rather like those washing up on the shores of Vancouver Island recently—so I’m pretty sure that impressionable kids (and women or boys with a history of abuse) would do well to steer clear of this film… though there’s a pretty decently redemptive finale.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of The X-Files: I Want To Believe.