Contrary to the opinions of many others, I thought The X-Files: I Want to Believe was a very good movie. Directed by Chris Carter, and written by Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Unlike the first film, the plot does not focus on the series’ ongoing extraterrestrial-based “mytharc” and instead works as a standalone thriller/horror story, similar to many of the “Monster-of-the-Week” episodes that were frequently seen in the TV series.
On a cold winter night, a woman parks her car in her garage, oblivious to the fact that her dog is barking like crazy inside the house. Suddenly, she is attacked and kidnapped by two men. Where she is taken remains a mystery, but a defrocked pedophile priest named Father Joe (Billy Connolly) claims to have had a vision of her abduction, and has guided a team of FBI agents outside the woman’s home where they make a rather grim discovery.
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have both left the FBI for civilian life since the series ended in 2002. Scully is working hard as a medical doctor in a Catholic hospital, desperately trying to find a cure for a terminally ill young boy. 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, Scully receives a visit from Special Agent Mosley Drummy (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) who seeks Scully’s help in locating Mulder.
Despite his initial misgivings, Scully is able to convince Mulder to join the investigation. Scully wants Mulder to find the missing agent, but she doesn’t believe the claims of the supposedly psychic priest. Of course, Mulder wants to believe. Even before he started weeping blood instead of tears, I believed him. Scully keeps right on insulting him right to his face. She wants not to believe.
After watching the film a couple of times, I can understand why some viewers felt The X-Files: I Want to Believe was a disappointment. Many scenes are intercut with each other, which viewers expect to be linked or connected in some way. And if the juxtaposed scenes don’t pay off, all we get is false tension. This film does have some moments of false tension; Carter is asking the audience to be patient and wait for the payoff later in the film. This technique is risky; those waiting for a great action scene were left out in the cold. Unlike the first X-Files film, there are no explosions or gore; instead Carter and Spotnitz allowed Mulder and Scully to express a level of emotion they were never able to during the television series; Mulder and Scully were able to grow and confront their emotional conflicts head on.
The theatrical 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio has been preserved on this disc and the quality of the picture is impressive. The Blu-ray transfer provides a sharper contrast and deeper black levels, but the absence of any vibrant coloring doesn’t provide many circumstances for the format to really show its potential. The subdued palette looks natural throughout and nothing is lost in translation. Fortunately, the image quality is very clear and the detail really pops. There are no artifacts or defects, even in the fast-moving or low-light night shots in the snow.
The sound is presented in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Sound has always been an important element to The X-Files, from Mark Snow’s haunting score to unnatural sounds of the monsters and the creepy environments they come from. This film is no exception. It’s not about action sequences, but more intimate moments. The audio here isn’t going to blow you away – not even with the jump to the high-def format – but if you listen closely you’ll notice more subtle effects that draw you into the scenes with busy ambient noise and active movement across the entire sound field.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe has a solid set of special features:
The commentary is informative and interesting, and the BD offers audiences the chance to view in PiP mode. They point out things that you might not otherwise notice in the background and talk extensively about their intentions in both the writing and directing process.
There are three additional deleted scenes not included in the extended cut. The titles pretty much describe the content of the scenes: “Cheryl Cunningham Begs Scientist to Let Her Go,” “Father Joe Visits Scully at Hospital,” and “Mulder Escapes from Car Wreck.”
The “green production” supplement is a talking-head interview with Carter about the ways in which the production reduced its environmental impact by taking certain eco-friendly steps. There’s more than one plug for Ford, which provided hybrid cars to the production, and Fox gets a mention for its new green directive. Promo piece.
“Body Parts” offers a tour of the special-effects workshop hosted by Bill Terezakis, special makeup effects designer on the film. He shows off some of the fake corpses and limbs created for the film.
The gag reel is quite lengthy and meaty, with plenty of fub moments of all the cast members goofing around. There are cell phone mishaps, line flubs, mechanical errors and a lot of breaking up set to the Nutcracker suite and random jazzy tunes.
“Dying to Live” is less of a music video and more of a slide show. It features still photos set to the hip-hop song by Xzibit (who plays Agent Mosley Drummy in the film). The same images can be found in the photo gallery feature, along with storyboards and concept art.
The “public service announcement” is nothing more than an anti-smoking advertisement. It has nothing to do with The X-Files and has no business showing up as a “special feature.”
There are three behind-the-scenes segments under the heading “Trust No One: Can the X-Files Remain a Secret?” The parts are divided chronologically, focusing generally on the beginning, middle and end of the production.
In part one — “You Can Go Home Again” — the cast and crew talk about how the film came about, how the script was developed and what it was like to come back to the franchise after so many years away.
Part two — “Misinformation” — covers the production itself, especially the extreme secrecy surrounding it and the lengths the producers went to in order to keep the any of the details from getting out. They gave the film the code name “Done One,” and kept the entire cast and crew on a need-to-know basis. Some of the crew members didn’t even know that they were working on an X-Files film when they started shooting. There were red script pages distributed so that they couldn’t be copied and misinformation in the form of fake photos, fake call sheets and bogus rumors leaked to Internet sites in order to throw fans off the scent.
The post-production process is the focus of part three — “Don’t Give Up” — which shows Spotnitz and editor Richard A. Harris preparing a rough cut of the film to show to Carter. It also explains how the title sequence and visual effects were created.
