2/20/22

Blood Capsule #121

THE X FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE (2008)

I'm all caught up.  Save for a rotten episode here and there, I've seen all of The X-Files that I can see, with or without a hyphen.  I Want to Believe arrived six years after the TV series was perorated into nullity, which makes the storyline seem awfully random.  Was anyone picketing for a second x-film?  If so, wouldn't it have made sense to resolve overarching narratives uprooted from eleven seasons of fertile soil?  Because writer/director Chris Carter decided to take the fuzzy, less obvious route.  The script reconvenes Spooky and Red to find missing persons...with missing body parts.

Billy Connolly plays a priest with sibylline precognition.  He uses his crystal-gazing senses to pinpoint victims of a Dr. Frankenstein-esque lunatic, but can his benevolence be trusted?  Oh, did I forget to mention that he sexually assaulted thirty-seven altar boys?  Overall, Believe has the makings of a sprawling chapter of The X-Files, perhaps an ambitious two-parter.  And it's pretty damn good, although I prefer its 1998 forebear by a nubbin.  The second half trails off.  I did appreciate the warm, yielding moments between Mulder and Scully.  There is just enough action to cob this sharecropper (???).  Robert Z'Dar says, "I don't know if I believe in flying saucers, but damn it, I believe in love.  I want to believe in Mulder and Scully!"


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