X-Files: We still want to believe

Sestra Amateur: 

People often talk about happiness, an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment (courtesy of verywellmind.com). Singers sing about it (The Beatles and their “warm gun,” Lana Del Rey and her “butterfly”). Writers write about it (Charles M. Schultz and his “puppy.”) For me, right now, in this very moment, happiness is watching The X-Files: I Want to Believe on a streaming channel that does not have commercials. Thank you, HBO Max! Now, on with our irregularly scheduled blog.

I don’t remember when I first saw this movie. It was probably after the DVD release but before I finished watching the complete run of the TV series. Back then, I liked how it was more of a stand-alone flick than Fight the Future was allowed to be but I had some questions going in. I’m curious to see if I’ll know the answers this time around.

In Somerset, West Virginia, a woman arrives home and gets attacked while FBI recruits conduct a daytime search in the snow. Special Agent in Charge Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Father Joe Chrissman (Billy Connolly) seem to be leading the crew. The woman at night strikes back at her assailants and makes a run for it but gets tackled by one of the men. Father Joe frantically digs in the snow where Agent Whitney uncovers a severed arm. So how did Father Joe know it would be there?

Doctor (and former FBI Special Agent) Dana Scully is advocating for her patient Christian, a boy suffering from Sandhoff disease -- a rare, incurable illness that often leads to death. Later, while updating Christian and his parents, they are interrupted by FBI Agent Mosley Drummy played by Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner. (Wow, if Xzibit wasn’t a proper noun, I’d clean up with that one in Words with Friends.) He’s looking for some guy named Fox Mulder. Scully claims she doesn’t work with Fox anymore. Mosley (well, actually Whitney) hopes Mulder can save the life of missing FBI agent Monica Bannan, the woman attacked at the beginning of the movie. Dana pops over to Fox’s isolated house to let him know the FBI’s offer -- in exchange for his help, Mulder will no longer be wanted on those trumped-up murder charges from the series finale. Fox and his massive ego think it’s an elaborate scheme to trick him into coming out of hiding. I’m pretty sure the feds would just follow Dana right to his front door if they wanted him that badly. Mulder eventually agrees but only if Scully goes with him. Partners again!

Sculder meet with Agents Drummy and Whitney (Drumney? Whitmy? Nah, their last names are too similar) at FBI Headquarters, where visitor badges no longer seem to be in the budget. It’s been three days since Monica’s disappearance. The severed arm Father Joe found in the snow belongs to an unidentified male, but it matches blood evidence found at Monica’s crime scene. “Psychic” Father Joe called the FBI six hours after Bannan’s disappearance. Too bad there’s a credibility issue, not about the psychic stuff so much, more about Father Joe being a convicted child molester. Sculder and Team Mokota(!) meet with Father Joe in his home. Scully takes umbrage to him praying to the same God she does. Mulder wants to see Joe’s psychic ability in action, but the not-so-good Father asks Dana to leave the room. The feds decide to take Father Joe back to the crime scene but Joe realizes they took him to the wrong house and he walks over to the correct one. I wouldn’t credit psychic ability for that: the real house has crime scene tape all over the place. Father Joe wanders to the area where Monica was tackled by one of the men. He claims he can’t see Monica’s fate but he may mean that literally, not figuratively; he’s bleeding from his eyes!

Popping back into her real life for a spell, Dr. Scully checks on Christian in the hospital. He doesn’t seem to like Father Ybarra, who appears to be Dana’s boss. Father Ybarra doesn’t like Scully wasting time and resources on terminal cases like Christian’s. I guess that makes him the second worst priest in this movie. Meanwhile, a Somerset woman driving in the snow stupidly tries to pass a pickup truck when the driver forces her to veer off the road and crash. He had just been stalking her at the community indoor swimming pool. She made it way too easy for him to kidnap her, which is exactly what happens.

Carter and company feel the need to give us a scene of Fox and Dana in bed together. I’m amused by her choice of bedside reading material: Beautiful Wasps Having Sex by Dori Carter. (Yes, she's the show creator/movie director and co-writer's wife. If you’re interested, it’s fairly affordable on Amazon and also available on the book-trading site paperbackswap.com.) Scully wants to talk about Christian’s tragic diagnosis. Mulder thinks their son, William, is one reason why she’s so emotional. Dana puts her investigative doctor hat back on and tells Fox what she learned about the severed arm. The toxicology report showed the presence of medication related to radiation and an animal tranquilizer. Then Whitney calls with a break in the case. Sculder join the investigators and Father Joe, who wanders some more until he finds a head in the ice under the snow. Dana, ever full of faith, doesn’t know what to believe.

Monica is trying to escape but things aren’t going well for her. The severed arm man is present but completely useless. The next morning, Dr. Scully learns Father Ybarra arranged for Christian to be moved to a palliative care facility, but she claims there is a stem cell-related therapy available. Ybarra and the staff at this Catholic hospital do not support the treatment. While Dana conducts research, Fox leaves messages about the severed head and other body parts the feds recovered in the ice. (I guess people don’t swim in that lake during the other seasons or they probably would have noticed the arms, legs, etc.) Mulder and Dakota discuss the serial killer aspect of her case while Father Joe leads them to the wrecked car in Somerset. The driver, Cheryl Cunningham, is nowhere to be found. But she wore a medical alert bracelet, just like Monica Bannan. Team Mokota and Mulder link the two missing women to the same indoor swimming pool and learn they have rare AB-negative blood type.

Dr. Scully arranges for Christian to undergo the stem cell treatments and conducts the surgery herself. Afterward, Fox updates her on the case. Dana’s thinking black market organ-harvesting. She wants Mulder to let the feds handle it from there so they won’t have to deal with the darkness of humanity anymore. They wish each other good luck and part ways. Afterward, Christian’s parents tell Scully they don’t want him to undergo any more treatments, but Dana isn’t quite ready to give up on him, probably because Father Joe uttered the words, “Don’t give up” to her.

At Manners-Colonial Hospital, Cheryl’s abductor gets questioned by Richmond District Attorney Robert Cole (Castiel? Constantine? Guy in a Trenchcoat?) while transporting human organs. Don’t you love when actual investigative legwork yields a suspect? Scully shows up unannounced at Father Joe’s apartment asking questions he can’t answer. They argue until Joe suffers a seizure so Dr. Scully attempts to save a man she loathes. Everyone arrives at Father Joe’s pretty quickly. Whitney even has the identity of their suspect, courtesy of the Richmond DA: Janke Dacyshyn. (Fun fact: actor Callum Keith Rennie, who played Janke, moved on to Duchovny’s show Californication after this movie. I guess he made a good impression.) Janke’s husband and partner-in-crime is identified as Franz Tomczezyn, one of Father Joe’s altar-boy victims. Guess the feds are really doubting the alleged psychic’s credibility now. Franz is the severed arm man.

Bannan finally sees an opportunity to escape from her captors, but a guard dog gets in her way. The FBI break into Janke’s employer’s office but no one is there. Of course Janke shows up while they’re searching the place and leaves when Agent Drummy is distracted by paperwork. Mulder and Whitney see Janke leave the building and the chase is on. (Did anyone think to grab the organ transplant bag our suspect abandoned? Or to let Drummy and his team know they’re chasing someone? Nope, they did not.) Janke escapes an out-of-shape Mulder by hiding in a building under construction. Whitney and Mulder lose their tactical edge by yelling information to each other. Since Janke knows exactly where she is, he easily pushes her off the ledge and she plummets to her death. Maybe he should have asked Agent Whitney what her blood type was before he killed her. Oh, and the abandoned organ transplant bag? It has Monica’s head in it.

Mulder visits Father Joe in his hospital room. Scully discloses the molester’s terminal cancer diagnosis and Joe learns his connection to one of the killers. He thinks it’s God’s work. Then again, he also thinks Monica is still alive, so he’s either 0-2 or 1-1. Mulder still hopes to find Cheryl alive. He ends up at Nutter’s Feed, a gasoline and animal supply store. While questioning the owner, Fox sees Janke’s truck and hides. Mulder then follows Janke, and for once, actually tries to use a cell phone to update Scully. Of course, continuing Chris Carter’s tradition of cell-phone usage (or lack of cell-phone usage) driving the plot, Fox gets distracted and crashes. Janke then uses his vehicle’s front snow plow to flip Mulder’s down a steep, snow-covered hill. Fox, next time just call Dana before you start driving!

Dr. Scully continues her stem cell research and learns about treatments being done on dogs in Russia. Dana thinks that’s what the killers are doing, except on humans. She also thinks Agent Bannan is still alive. (I thought they found her head!?) Mulder is unable to take Scully’s call because he’s busy digging his injured self out of her wrecked car. Dana asks for Agent Drummy’s help in locating Fox, but he refers her to the local police. Luckily, Scully still has a trump card to play…

Mulder continues walking toward the suspect’s home and finds Janke’s disabled truck. Janke comforts husband Franz, who is the recipient of a Frankenstein’s monster situation that is meant to save his life. I guess he also has that rare AB-negative blood type. And the final piece of the puzzle? Franz’s head on Cheryl’s body, so Franz can be a woman not dying instead of a dying man. (Maybe Carter was…inspired by Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs.) Fox approaches the house but gets attacked by a two-headed dog. (Yep, you read that right.) Local troopers find Mulder’s crash scene and cell phone. You might be asking yourself, how did Scully get to the scene if Fox had her car? Well, she got a ride. From Walter Skinner!

Mulder gets past the dog(s?) and interrupts the surgery, threatening to hit the medical staff with a wrench. Too bad he gets distracted by Franz’s severed, yet conscious head and the surgeon drugs him. Team Sculner continue to search for Fox. Dana finds a link to a nearby address and scripture Father Joe had quoted to her. They hear dogs barking and head that way. And just when Janke is about to chop off Mulder’s head, Scully clobbers him! (Janke, not Fox, even though she probably had the urge.) Walter is able to stop the surgery. Dr. Scully saves Cheryl while Skinner warms up a freezing Mulder. (All together now: Awww.)

In the aftermath, Father Joe dies and Fox is convinced his death occurred simultaneously with Franz’s body. He also believes Joe’s lung cancer was brought on by Franz’s same diagnosis. For whatever reason, Joe had a psychic connection with this victim. In the end, the feds assumed Father Joe was an accomplice. As usual, Mulder rails against the inaccuracies of the story and the lack of supernatural phenomena getting recognized. Dana and Fox continue to overanalyze Joe’s words to her: “Don’t give up.” Mulder propositions Scully and she considers escaping the darkness with him. But the doctor wins out and heads back to the hospital to continue trying to save young Christian’s life.

Hope you stuck around for the end credits because they change the entire tone of the movie’s ending. First, you get a techno version of Mark Snow’s X-Files theme. Then the scene transforms from Unkle’s mix of the theme to their catchy song, "Broken." The oil and snow images change to a beautiful blue ocean. And Sculder have managed to escape the darkness after all. At least until 2016, when things reach a whole new level of WTH darkness.

Sestra Professional: 

Before diving into the movie, word broke overnight that the Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins had passed, and I wanted to offer condolences to family, friends, Foos and fans through a piece of X-Files trivia from the first film. "Walking After You" originally was performed with Dave Grohl on most of the instruments for the Foos' The Colour and the Shape album. But by the time it went on the Fight the Future soundtrack, Taylor Hawkins had joined the fold as the resident drummer extraordinaire. Such an amazing difference. 

That reminds me of my different reactions between the two movies. Fight the Future had its flaws (specifically the latter quarter of the film), but I did see it in theaters more than once because it was good fun. I did not have the same regard for I Want to Believe. In fact, I was really disappointed when I walked out of the cinema. But I do appreciate it more than I did upon release, although it has flaws as well -- the main one being that Mulder and Scully don't really get to do their thing.

I can get behind leaving the conspiracy in the dust, although we had that whole Dec. 22, 2012 alien invasion due date that was such an "important" part of the regular-run finale still looming. I always thought the first film should have been a monster-of-the-week episode and not mythology-based. But they wanted to advance the latter, which they kinda sorta did, and then summarily left behind because corn-crop Jiffy Poppers and international locations don't exactly fit a Fox TV budget.

What I pictured for I Want to Believe was a tight mystery with the comedic elements that originally set The X-Files aside from other shows of its ilk. For example, I could imagine "Beyond the Sea" (Season 1, Episode 13) and "Pusher" (S3E17) as major motion pictures. Maybe "Triangle" (S6E3) or "Monday" (S6E14) could have been expanded upon instead of just being stellar episodes from the show's first season in Hollywood. What we got in this film was an antihero so dark that jokes seemed inappropriate, a retread of Scully watching over a sick child and the aforementioned dearth of Sculder scenes.

So we start from a position of bleakness and the road just gets bleaker. It's akin to driving down one of those unlit, icy roads in the film with snow drifting down at a hypnotizing and blinding rate. If you take the proceedings at face value and don't expect a light-hearted romp, it is winds up being rather picturesque, like looking out at the horizon the morning after one of those heavy snowfalls. In that way, it's gorgeous. Kudos to returning director of photography Bill Roe for that.

What's up, Doc? My favorite scenes without a doubt revolves around our first moments with Dana and Fox. It had been so long since we saw them, thousands of hours of fan fiction were logged hypothesizing what had become of them. The charm really lies within the ease with which the dialogue's delivered by Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. There's nothing life-changing in the scene, yet it's life-affirming for those of us invested in Mulder and Scully for so long.

Fox starts by spouting the kind of dialogue that has to be simultaneously pretentious, clunky and rapid-fire. In short, the words we would expect coming out creator Chris Carter's hand and thusly Fox Mulder's mouth. I'm so charmed by that fact that I'm not even rolling my eyes about it. At least it's not done in voiceover.

It's also fun to be back in the halls of the FBI building, since we vicariously spent as much time there as Fox and Dana. Theoretically we've been there longer than Agent Drummy (Xzibit) and ASAC Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), but we feel just as uncomfortable as Sculder does walking into bustling rooms in which other suits are trying to solve the case.

And now a few words about Monica Bannan. I remember wondering in the theater whether Annabeth Gish was contacted about returning as Monica Reyes in this movie instead of Bannan or with some slight script alteration serving the role Dakota Whitney fills, and she either declined or couldn't fit it into her schedule. Losing Reyes here would certainly have been more noble than what they put her/us through at later dates. So while, at the time, I was glad we didn't lose our precious Reyes to this case, in retrospect, I am not so sure.

I'm done chasing monsters in the dark: Scully apparently doesn't mince words anymore, because she gets right to the heart of why God might not listen to Father Joe's prayers, and leading to Mulder's supposition that maybe a deity isn't the one sending the convicted pedophile visions. And thus we come to the fork in the road, for Fox is intrigued and Dana is not interested in literally going back down these roads again.

Mulder finds something of a kindred spirit in Whitney. Luckily, there's no sort of sexual tension whatever or that might create a furor among the shippers. Dakota is part Monica Reyes, part Fox Mulder. That leaves Mosley Drummy as the Scully of the team. Back at the hospital, Dana's fighting her own battles, which means a series of futile conversations involving Father Ybarra (Adam Godley). They don't serve much purpose outside reminding us that Scully still has faith and will call upon it in order to save the child.

There's a long-awaited Fox and Dana bed scene ... and they're talking about a kid who is going to die from a brain disease and animal tranquilizer found in a severed arm. So while it's nice finally seeing them together and what not, I'm quite sure this isn't what the romance acolytes were after. I'll once again reiterate that the hottest moment we've ever seen between Sculder at this point was in the hallway during Fight the Future, right before the untimely bee sting.

I can't look into the darkness with you anymore: I could do without the references to Samantha and William. By this time, Scully certainly knows that Mulder doesn't think every single case is about saving his sister. Although I might -- and did -- buy it when it was brought up by the nouveau FBI agents. And the reverse is true re: Fox having to point out that Dana's interest in saving a charming kid has to do with William. But even that's easier to take than watching them pull away from each other, and I'm a no-romo, for Pete's sake.

At some point, we have to get into the action part, right? So while Scully waits and prays for her charge, Mulder hangs out at an unfinished high-rise construction site with Whitney. It's simultaneously surprising and not when she gets shoved to her death. But that's what you get for noticing Fox shaved his beard and touching his cheek, Dakota. If you asked Diana Fowley, she'd probably tell you that you got off easy, for shippers do not want anyone but Dana touching their guy.

There's kind of a stilted convo between Sculder about them not being able to stay together because she fell in love with him due of his stubbornness, and then we can get into running the reverse of Fight the Future -- this time with Scully (and Skinner, thank God Drummy transferred the call to someone "with some balls") saving Mulder. From an action standpoint, I'll give the latter part of this movie credit for being more interesting than Fox's retrieval of Dana in Fight the Future. (I still laugh when Cigarette-Smoking Man says, "It's all gone to hell!" and the baddies just give up on their very intricate, complex and probably expensive system.)

Mitch Pileggi isn't around for very long, but he does get the funniest line in I Want to Believe when talking about Mulder: "He wouldn't do anything crazy. ... (Then off Scully's sideways look of wonder) ... Not overly crazy." As you can see, I mean the intentionally funny line. And Walter draws the movie together for us. He's the thread we needed to make sense of the madness and fit it into The X-Files package, and maybe just smile a bit amidst all the darkness. For the shippers who don't believe that to be true, hey, you got your kiss to wrap up the proceedings and Sculder's vacay in the sun at the end of the credits.

Guest star of the week: It really is a virtuoso performance by Billy Connolly. The tendency would be to rank him alongside series baddies Brad Dourif ("Beyond the Sea"), Robert Wisden ("Pusher") and Tom Noonan ("Paper Hearts," S4E10), not to mention the kings -- Peter Boyle ("Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," S3E4) and Charles Nelson Reilly ("Jose Chung's From Outer Space, S3E20.") But that's a disservice to all involved, because Connolly gets more time to worm his way into our collective consciousness. We don't admire Father Joe in the slightest, but he does make us understand him a little better.