To paraphrase Frank Herbert, expectation is the mind-killer. Back in 2008, I was 18 and didn’t keep up with movie news as obsessively as I would in the future – which meant that mean’t that I went in to I Want to Believe almost completely blind, knowing nothing about it other than the fact I was an X-Files megafan and would watch just about anything with that title slapped on it. What I got, unfortunately, was a lame duck of a protracted monster of the week episode about whatever real life stuff creator Chris Carter was obsessing over at the time: stem cells, organ harvesting. and whether paedophiles can be redeemed. No alien invasion, just a depressed Mulder in hiding, and a preoccupied Scully (finally just a medical doctor) who, despite breaking Mulder out of a military prison and going on the run with him, seemed to get off scot-free.
It sucked. The two other mega fans I was with complained with me about it the entire way home and the friend that was just along for the ride seemed to take great joy in our pain. Eighteen years later (good lord!), I’ve softened my opinion of I Want to Believe. It’s well-directed, has some beautiful cinematography, and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still have the best on-screen chemistry perhaps of anything ever. But, still, I did not have high hopes for a new director’s cut of the film from Chris Carter, especially since he stopped being a great writer sometime in 1998.
Vrach Frankenshteyn makes a few changes in its slightly-shorter runtime, all of which I like well enough – while the romantic aspect of Mulder and Scully’s relationship is pulled back, there is also the great choice of eliminating any romantic tension or love triangle possibilities between Mulder and Agent Whitney. Not only did that drag down the theatrical cut, it was also a recurring annoyance in the show as well, especially in Carter’s own episodes. Glad he has learned something in the last two decades, at least.
Instead of romance, Agent Whitney serves as the FBI’s resident believer and her chemistry with Mulder feels more like kindred spirits rather than “Scully isn’t here, so let’s go crazy on each other right hereon the snow!” Because of this, her death feels less like a punishment for looking at Scully’s man, more like the price of doing business on the X Files; it feels more real, even if that was a low bar to clear.
Scully, as in the theatrical cut, is in her own Lifetime save-the-dying-kid drama. While we barely get the show’s iconic central partnership proper, Scully has an interesting push-and-pull choice between going into the darkness with Mulder again (man, these two deserve so many more awards than they got for making Carter’s notoriously clunky dialogue work) and staying in the light and performing dangerous surgeries on children. And when I say interesting, I don’t mean that it’s necessarily good, as the film dodges giving her decent in-story motivation. Her reasons for this are obvious to any long-term fan despite the fact that they are only hinted at in the film – The X-Files took everything from Scully, including her son William. Maybe William was still so unpopular at this point that including him in the movie would have tanked it even further.
Mulder, on the other hand, is simple – you want to get him on a case, come out of hiding, and remind him of his lost sister, Samantha. Crystal clear. While Mulder has also lost everything due to his time on the X Files, he is still collecting possible cases and pining them to his I Want to Believe poster (yes, I have one too), and he makes a more comfortable jump from series to big screen without leaving major motivations unspoken.
It is all very workmanlike but fine enough, until we get to the villains. Carter spent so much time trying to humanise Father Joe (played by Billy Connolly who shocked me by dying at the end of the film for once): the supposed psychic who is the only thing in this film that qualifies it to be an X-File. Imagine if Tooms was just a guy who could reach quite far? The show wouldn’t have made it past season one. The question of Father Joe’s redemption is an interesting (there is that word again) one, with Carter deliberately picking the most abhorrent character he could to shock us. Except Carter has never been good at goading an audience that way, blundering clumsily through the complex morality with his usual lack of just about anything the story requires, like nuance or depth. It does lead to actually fantastic moral stand-offs between Scully and Father Joe as Anderson and Connolly boost the material with their finely-tuned performances.
Let us approach the biggest failure of the film: the actual villains. Here is the rundown: a gay male couple are kidnapping women so Russian surgeons can put one of their heads of a female body, a bizarre and vaguely homophobic storyline that seems to equate male homosexuality as a longing for a female body especially with such little context given. Apart from surviving, I don’t know anything about these two, and that’s a problem that Carter has not fixed from the theatrical cut. The dying one is also one of Father Joe’s victims, and could be the reason he is getting visions. I can guarantee you that every episode about Scully’s faith, especially when she was God’s warrior, handled this stuff better than Vrach Frankenshteyn.
So, is this new director’s cut an improvement? Yes, I had a good time watching it despite its many flaws. If I did star ratings ,I would say this was three stars to the originals two. It also gives me the urge to watch the show again from the beginning (which I have done at least partially over on The Cutprice Guignol, should you want to read more of my takes on this series) , so this stunt worked on me. You got me, Disney +. But I’m on to you, your syndicate can’t hide the truth forever. I’ll find out why you haven’t put You’re the Worst on the UK platform, and when I do, I’m going to blow this thing wide open. Keep watching the skees, everyone.
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By Kevin Boyle
(header image via Bloody Disgusting)
No But Listen 