This is a spoiler-free review of The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, which premieres on Hulu on Friday, August 14.
No one is ever going to accuse The X-Files: I Want to Believe of being the better of the two X-Files films, but time has been fairly kind to this overly maligned 2008 release. It hasn’t hurt that the two revival seasons now exist, and I Want to Believe no longer shoulders the burden of being the last word on the story of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). And now the film is due for a whole new reappraisal thanks to the release of Chris Carter’s director’s cut, subtitled “Vrach Frankenshteyn.” Just don’t come into this version expecting a dramatically different or improved experience.
As far as contemporary director’s cuts go, Vrach Frankenshteyn is no Kingdom of Heaven or Doctor Sleep. Carter isn’t dusting off entire reels of lost footage or significantly recutting and reworking the final product. In fact, this version of the film is actually a bit shorter than the original. The goal isn’t to fundamentally transform the experience, but to lightly streamline the picture and amp up the horror elements that were somewhat lost in the studio’s pursuit of a PG-13 rating.
The result is a very minor overhaul of I Want to Believe, to the point where I felt compelled to pull up the original cut and skim through it just to get a sense of what had actually been changed. As the new subtitle suggests, Carter wants this version to be a more direct homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But aside from a bit more gore and body horror elements in the climactic surgical sequence, I can’t say that this version really has the intended effect. The villain characters are still too thinly drawn and little-seen to leave much of a lasting impression.
So it is that we’re left with a film that still boasts the same strengths and suffers from the same weaknesses as the original. I Want to Believe has always been a middle-of-the-road procedural X-Files episode masquerading as something bigger. Apart from resolving the cliffhanger ending of the series (rather abruptly and anticlimactically, I might add), it lacks the ties to the franchise’s larger mythology that make 1998’s The X-Files: Fight the Future such a thrilling and necessary piece of the canon. It’s a strangely unambitious spinoff, asking fans to settle in and simply watch Mulder and Scully embark on a new case. Nor does it boast the terrifying creatures or wonderfully quirky sense of humor that defines many of the show’s best monster-of-the-week installments.
That all being said, there’s a fundamental appeal to the Mulder/Scully dynamic that can’t be downplayed. Even in a case like this, where the monsters in question are of the purely terrestrial variety and the plot feels cribbed from any number of murder mystery thrillers, these two characters are never not compelling to watch. The intense personal chemistry that Duchovny and Anderson spent years honing on the main series remains in full force here. It’s enough simply to sit back and savor their bickering and the eternal clash between Mulder’s lofty theories and Scully’s dogged rationality.
In either version, I Want to Believe is best appreciated as a Scully-focused story. Mulder doesn’t have much of an arc here, even with this being his first big case since becoming a pariah and fugitive from the government. As usual, he jumps to conclusions and finds his belief in the paranormal amply rewarded. But with Scully, the film becomes an exploration of faith tested and faith rewarded. Can she do right by her terminally ill young patient? Can she put aside her innate revulsion to Billy Connolly’s disgraced priest, Father Joe, and accept his psychic visions for what they are? Scully is the one who struggles and grows the most in the film, and Anderson makes the most of that material with a suitably fraught and emotional performance.
Connolly himself deserves special mention, as he also turns in a strong performance amid a sea of mostly forgettable supporting actors. It’s easy for the audience to despise Father Joe as quickly and deeply as Scully does, given his terrible crimes, but Connolly is able to find a warmth and humanity to the character despite all that.
Again, it’s easier to look back on The X-Files: I Want to Believe with kinder eyes now that the two revival seasons exist. It’s not a great film, but for anyone who simply wants to kick back for an hour-and-a-half and watch Mulder and Scully do their thing while Mark Snow’s haunting score plays in the background, it does the trick. Vrach Frankenshteyn does nothing to alter that equation for good or for ill. It’s a very minor update that nonetheless serves as a handy excuse to give this sequel another look after all these years.
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