Movie Review: X-Files: I Want To Believe

Here's my X-Files history: loved the last movie [a whole decade ago] and kinda watched a half-dozen or so episodes, which were ok; not much of an auspicious past.

The new movie is awful. Utterly horrific. Let me explain by starting with a comparison to a movie that most people also hate: Waterworld.

I actually liked Waterworld, but when re-watching it again recently, I realized why everyone hates it: Never, ever start your movie with the hero, the de facto protagonist, drinking his own urine. If you recall, the first shot of the entire movie was Kevin Costner pissing into a jar before pumping it through a rudimentary filtering machine and drinking it. All one shot, and a textbook example of how not to start a movie. There are other problems with Waterworld, of course, but I'm convinced that subconsciously people hate the movie for that reason.

The second X-Files movie takes that problem to the next level. I'll add another rule to the filmmakers' book of law: Never, ever feature a pedophile priest as any kind of hero/protagonist, much less the central McGuffin to the story.

So yeah, within 10 minutes, I was creeped the f*** out, hating the movie and completely perplexed as to why any studio executive would think to themselves "Hey, X-Files has been out of the public mind for over 6 years. A veiled attack on religion using a pedophile Catholic priest sounds like a great way to bring in the old and new crowds." Freaking asanine and revolting.

I've read many times and now agree that this movie is nothing more than a glorified TV episode stretched over 2 hours. There is no sense of epic scope or even thought to the film. Once a real mystery started revealing itself, it was mildly interesting, but not hold-my-attention-for-two-hours interesting. Sure, it was nice to see Mulder and Scully again, and I'm mystified how Gillian Anderson, who is, like, 75, still looks good. But in the end, I'm mostly just surprised that I made it to the end.

In no way, shape, or form do I recommend this movie to anyone. I hope they bury The X-Files and never pull that dead horse out into the open to beat anymore.