Chris Carter wanted X-Files: I Want to Believe to be a stand alone project; for people who had never seen an episode of X-Files to be able to watch it and completely understand what was happening. But when it comes to the X-Files, is that even possible?
Fans of the show will undoubtedly enjoy seeing Mulder and Scully together again, and together more than has ever been shown before (I won't go into details, but after 9 seasons of longing looks and sideways glances, things have definitely progressed in the years since the show ended.) No longer in the FBI, Scully is approached by new agent Mosley Drummy (portrayed by rapper Xzibit who should stick to rapping) to ask Mulder to return and help solve the disappearance of a missing FBI agent. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) apparently has a jones for Mulder, as she is the one that has cleared away all charges against him in order for him to come back and help. She is "Scully-lite", a skeptic of claims by a former pedophile priest (Billy Connolly) that he is having visions of the missing agent despite the fact that he keeps leading them directly to missing limbs in a field of pristine snow.
Scully herself spends most of the film in a state of conflict. She is working at a Catholic hospital and needs to perform a controversial stem cell procedure on a young boy. She asks Mulder to help find the missing agent but spends the rest of the film asking him to walk away. She is repulsed by Father Joe and his deviant past, but is compelled to see him regarding his simple prophetic statement of "Don't give up hope." After questioning everything and everyone around her, she is not sure how or where to place her faith.
Faith in Mulder is what Scully resists the most. Our first glimpse of him is as a fully bearded man, clipping out stories of events that would have made new cases if he was not hiding out from the FBI. Back in investigation mode, his enthusiasm for paranormal activities is reawakened and takes him into familiar territory of being ultimately consumed by his longing for the truth. He may no longer work for the FBI, but it is clear that his mind is never far off from his life's work there.
As with most of the television episodes, there is a lot of information beneath the surface that is never quite explained or solved. There was a lot of secrecy about the film before it's release; so much so that fake publicity went up and the film was not even screened early for reviews. Perhaps this was not the wisest of moves, as those fans looking for something deeper in paranormal mythology will be deeply disappointed. No alien conspiracy here, but more a testament towards the connection between all of us; those that we despise and those that we long to save.
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