I had little interest in this; the promos didn’t intrigue me at all and I only went because I liked the TV show. It turned out to not be that bad, but it’s not great, either. There’s a lot of weirdness: Gillian Anderson, while not looking bad, looks surprisingly old. Apparently her character and Fox Mulder are living (and sleeping) together, and they each take advantage of this being a movie and not a TV show to swear a few times for no good reason (and it feels odd). The plot is also strange: Mulder’s a runaway and the FBI bring him back in to help find a missing agent. They have a psychic who’s given them leads, but is he real or fake? Fox is the supposed expert, but it seems a flimsy reason to bring him in. After all, if the psychic’s leads work, why do they need Fox? And if they don’t work, what good is Fox? But the psychic gimmick does provoke some interesting debate over truth and the existence of God and such things; we get the irrational Mulder conflicting with the rational Scully, who’s now working as a doctor and struggling to deal with a terminal child she cannot help. I liked the debate, but as usual it’s just word games and there are no answers or conclusions, just more questions and mysteries. The plot turns out to be some sort of weird internal organ thief thing, which feels awfully small for a big screen movie. But at least there isn’t the dreaded “conspiracy theory” mantra that plagued the show. The first half of the movie is a bit too mysterious and muddled, but the latter half is more action (though of a low-key variety), which feels equally strange in that it’s such a change from the rest of the film. The best part is the middle, when Scully confronts the child molester-priest/psychic and he challenges her beliefs. It’s definitely an interesting film for fans of the series, but it’s still not the movie fans want (there are no answers).
