By aiming for neither of the sweet spots (fan fidelity or single-minded entertainment) that might have earned it different but probably easier and equally valuable success, Carter has with The X-Files: I Want to Believe created a mediocre mystery that relies too frequently on coincidence and screenwriting convenience to elicit genuine interest, much less "belief" in its twists and turns.
In the film, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson return to their iconic roles of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, former paranormal investigators who have eased into civilian lifestyles during the years since the show ended in 2002. (That the story continues within a real-time chronology of events is intriguing, but proves irrelevant.) Scully has become a physician who battles semi-regularly with the hospital administration over promising but untested medical procedures; Mulder has become a bearded recluse who thumbtacks newspaper clippings of conspiracies and other oddball stories to the walls of his study.
But when an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped, Mulder and Scully are drawn back into service to consult with a disgraced priest name Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) who may or may not have psychic visions. In the process, the two are sucked back into the world of bizarre events and unexplained phenomena -- one that previously ended with Mulder's professional disgrace and both his and Scully's personal disillusionment.
While undeniably there are all sorts of intriguing questions in The X-Files: I Want to Believe -- the location of the victim and the identity of the kidnapper being the two most obvious -- the only one that matters is why was this the right story to tell? As a potential serial killer thriller, far too many movies have preceded it to justify its exploration of the fractured minds and motivations of nutjobs and weirdos. Moreover, that concept by itself has nothing to do with the integrity of the series proper, which often expertly wove supernatural or occult elements into familiar thriller conventions to create something unique.
Here, Carter and his co-writer Frank Spotnitz add Connolly's priest to the equation in some desperate attempt to spice up the story with sci-fi mumbo jumbo, but there's no disguising the fact that the meat of this story is culled from decades old psychological thrillers that have already been prodded and pilfered of their relevance.
Beyond its threadbare (at best) connection to the series, I Want to Believe is just plain poorly made. Virtually all of its plot developments rely upon a degree of coincidence that would be improbable at best if they existed alone, but which together feel spectacularly impossible, not to mention creatively lazy. Are we really supposed to believe that Scully saw something on a mailbox through the window of a moving truck that is driving at night in the snow? Or accept that the car that the kidnapper is driving breaks down just at the moment when Mulder is about to lose his or her trail? Or go with the fact that Crissman's visions arrive in just unpredictable enough ways that he will always offer the exact right information at the moment it's needed?
Based on the relentless secrecy with which this film was assembled, I feel vaguely compelled to spoil its main story. But that would require me to understand that story, which I barely did (or who knows -- maybe I didn't). Carter and Spotnitz seem no more eager to reveal concrete details in the film itself than in any of the interviews or press events they attended in the months leading up to its release, so their explanations and revelations now really don't add up to much emotionally or logically because they crisscross, doubletalk and otherwise avoid spelling out anything that might add up to a real sense of understanding about what's going on.
As for Mulder and Scully? I won't reveal anything that happens to them, what part they play in each other's lives or how they participate in the overall story. But suffice it to say they seem to have absolutely no connection, except, well... as partners who stopped working together several years ago. While this might qualify as heresy to the fans who have been pining for these characters since the debut of the show in 1993, what existed then simply doesn't now: If as indicated above the filmmakers were trying to maintain a realistic sense of time, then they betray the opportunity for alienation or estrangement between the two of them with some of the story developments that happen in the film. But if Carter and Co. really think that these two are invested in one another as characters, much less Duchovny and Anderson are as actors, I might point out that there are folks on opposite sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict with a more compelling chemistry than these two share.
Ultimately, an effort like this will undoubtedly be examined in the context of made-for-TV follow-ups and straight-to-DVD sequels, and it shares much in common with many of them because The X-Files: I Want to Believe sadly does not justify its existence. That's not to say that an X-Files movie isn't deserved at all, or that a new series of installments couldn't resurrect these characters (or better yet, just its mythology) in a way that's interesting to longtime followers and newcomers alike. But I Want to Believe is not the effort that is going to do that because it's a third-tier genre film masquerading as first-tier entertainment, and worse, a faithful update of one of the most beloved shows in sci-fi TV history. So until whoever it is (Anderson and Duchovny, Carter and Spotnitz) finds whatever they need (chemistry, money, inspiration), I'm obligated to report that The X-Files is a series still lingering in limbo, and at absolute best, that I Want to Believe its own furtive (if unintentional) plea for a future that doesn't end with this mediocre movie.
2 out of 5 Stars, 4/10 Score