The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

Mulder and Scully are called back to duty by the FBI when a former priest claims to be receiving psychic visions pertaining to a kidnapped agent.

Director:

Chris Carter

Writers:

Frank Spotnitz, Chris Carter

Stars:

David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
David Duchovny	...	Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson	...	Dana Scully
Amanda Peet	...	ASAC Dakota Whitney
Billy Connolly	...	Father Joseph Crissman
Xzibit	...	Agent Mosley Drummy (as Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner)
Mitch Pileggi	...	Walter Skinner
Callum Keith Rennie	...	2nd Abductor - Janke Dacyshyn
Adam Godley	...	Father Ybarra
Alex Diakun	...	Gaunt Man
Nicki Aycox	...	2nd Victim - Cheryl Cunningham
Fagin Woodcock	...	1st Abductor - Franz Tomczeszyn
Marco Niccoli	...	Christian Fearon
Carrie Ruscheinsky	...	Margaret Fearon
Spencer Maybee	...	Blair Fearon
Veronika Hadrava	...	Female Assistant

Storyline

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully both worked at the FBI as partners, a bond between them that led to their becoming lovers. But now they're out of the FBI and have begun new careers. Scully works as a staff physician at a Catholic hospital. Her focus these days is on a young boy with an incurable brain disease. Administration wants to give up on him. Scully, who feels a special bond with the boy, does not. Meanwhile, Mulder's focus is on clipping newspaper articles, throwing pencils into his ceiling and writing about the paranormal. Scully and Mulder are brought together as partners again when a special case requires Mulder's expertise and Scully is prevailed upon to convince him to help. The case involves a pedophile priest who claims he is having psychic visions regarding the whereabouts of a missing FBI agent.

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Plot Keywords:

fbi | psychic vision | psychic | priest | staff physician | 

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Taglines:

To find the truth, you must believe.

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material

Details

Country:

USA Canada

Language:

English Russian Czech

Release Date:

25 July 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

The X Files 2

Filming Locations:

10112 208 St, Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$30,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$10,021,753, 27 July 2008, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$20,981,633, 5 October 2008

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$68,369,434, 29 March 2010

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox, Ten Thirteen Productions, Dune Entertainment III

Technical Specs

Runtime:

104 min 108 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS (uncredited)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Mulder and Scully first walk back into the FBI offices right before they walk into the bullpen, a female agent walks by that catches Mulder's attention and he watches her walk away. The woman is Vanessa Morley, who throughout the series played the young Samantha Mulder, and is the same Samantha in the photo Mulder has taped to the back of his home office door.

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Goofs

When Mulder finds the snowplow truck on the side of the road, and looks inside for the tire iron, the snowplow's roof lights are on. When Mulder walks away from the snowplow in the next shot, the roof lights are off.

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Quotes

Dana Scully: Listen to me! I need your help!
Agent Mosley Drummy: I'm sorry. I - I can't help you.
Dana Scully: Then let me talk to somebody there with some balls who can.

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Crazy Credits

During the opening when the 20th Century Fox logo comes on and fades away, the X in "FOX" lingers a little longer and is the last letter to fade off.

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Connections

References The X-Files: Beyond the Sea (1994)

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Soundtracks

Broken
(2007)
Written by Gavin Clarke (as Gavin Clark), James Lavelle, Richard File and Christopher Allen Goss (as Chris Goss)
Performed by Unkle (as UNKLE) featuring Gavin Clarke (as Gavin Clark)
Courtesy of Surrender All Ltd.
By Arrangement with Zync Music Inc.

User Reviews

A Nutshell Review: The X=Files: I Want to Believe

It's not hard to imagine how time flies, when you realize that one of your best loved television series of all time had already ended its run, and you reminisce the times back when one of your weekend nights revolved around sitting in a bunk with your army mates, all glued to what Chris Carter had conjured as adventures for the two best known goggle box FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). While we always needed to crank up the volume to try and make sense of the murmurs involving shadow governments and secret conspiracies, our favourite episodes almost unanimously were those one-off ones, so called the "monster" episodes.

And it's been 6 years since The End, and 10 years since the first X-Files movie hit the screen. While that movie was intricately linked to the major conspiracy thread, this movie, as the trailer led us to believe, was a one-off monster episode, or so I thought. While it's indeed a one-off episode, it's no monster of an episode in the mould of those in the television series, though it really felt like an extended, stand alone episode which gave us a slightly more in depth look at the dynamics of our beloved duo, especially what happened to them in the last few years they went off the FBI radar. But as the saying goes, you can't put a good man, and a lady, down for too long.

This is a story about obsession. As we all know, Mulder's obsessed with everything X- classifiable, and in the years of absence, here comes an opportunity for a breath of fresh air when Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) comes knocking to seek his expertise, as the FBI now has a case on their hands and a psychic, convicted pedophile of a Catholic Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) who volunteers key information to help in that case. The FBI isn't sure if Father Crissman is a liar, or worse, connected to the crime, and hence Mulder's help is to be their lie-detector. Naturally with religion and her usual cynicism in the mix, Scully is disgusted by the sheer presence of the religious felon, and thus set the stage for some conflict with her beau.

Like an old, quarreling couple who can't seem to give way to each other, their philosophies clash as their interests - Scully battling the hospital system to save her young chronically ill patient - differ, and threaten to pull the couple apart. He thinks that she's not being supportive of his venturing into an X-case even though they're now civilians, while she thinks he's latching onto Father Crissman to use his prowess, if proved true, to find Samantha Fox. Which I thought would probably make an excellent sub plot, but alas the potential was dangled like a carrot in front of us, and then went totally off tangent.

Don't expect any big sets or intricate subplots here, as it really looked like it's done on a shoestring budget, with the look and feel of a typical classic television episode, a two-parter in fact. There are strange aberrations of course, but all these go unexplained, and you know they're just going to be glossed over since everything will be wrapped up by the time the end credits roll. However, there are adequate moments to keep you at the edge of your seat, and some developments do enough to leave your mouth gaping wide open, especially those involving extreme medicine.

David Duchovny does look more comfortable reprising his role as Mulder, but Gillian Anderson, as interviews have revealed, required a lot more time trying to get back into character, and this uneasiness unfortunately shows on screen. The chemistry's still not lacking, but given that their respective characters have aged and grown more comfortable with one another, gone are the tensions between them, though the problems that surface here did try to rekindle some of the opposition they felt during the course of their long running series.

Chris Carter and X-Files regular scribe Frank Spotnitz did incorporate a nice surprise in the movie, so do keep your eyes peeled as you will silently cheer when it happens. But I thought what was a ghastly way to bid farewell, was the little coda toward the end of the credit roll, which somewhat signals the finale of everything, though in a very out of place manner. Anyhow, this X-Files movie episode isn't going to win any new fans over, but for X-philes, I'd bet we're probably just satisfied already with our heroes appearing in celluloid one more time, that no matter how wafer thin the plot is, it's not going to dampen our collective fan spirit.

And to thank our lucky stars that Mark Snow's iconic theme song, didn't get played in the movie under the horrific techno rendition.