Plot: When a group of women is mysteriously abducted, it becomes a case right out of The X-Files. Years after walking away from the FBI, Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully are pulled back from the shadows when a federal agent vanishes without a trace. In a case you’d never see on TV, their only lead is a disgraced, defrocked priest claiming to have horrific psychic visions of the crime. Forced to confront the ghosts of their past, the partners must navigate a chilling winter landscape and an even darker human monstrosity. The truth of these crimes is out there somewhere … and it will take Mulder and Scully to find it.
Review: Rumored for quite some time, the director’s cut of the 2008 sequel The X-Files: I Want To Believe has been bandied about by series creator Chris Carter as the definitive vision of his standalone continuation of the acclaimed science fiction series that he promised would be a horror-centric reimagining of Frankenstein featuring Mulder and Scully tracking down a serial killer with the aid of a psychic priest. With the marketing promising that the new mature rating would hold horrors unseen in the theatrical cut, I waited with bated breath to finally see the Vrach Frankenshteyn version. I can tell you that while The X-Files: I Want To Believe was always a mediocre movie and an underwhelming entry in the franchise, this new edition somehow makes it worse. Clocking in at ten minutes shorter than the theatrical cut, The X-Files: I Want To Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn is an exercise in technicalities imposed by the Motion Picture Association’s puritanical control of film ratings rather than a restored version of the movie that is somehow scarier.
The new cut of The X-Files: I Want To Believe alters nothing of the plot, structurally or otherwise. The film picks up after Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) goes into hiding following his trial for crimes against the FBI. Living in seclusion, Mulder lives with Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who works as a doctor at a hospital, when FBI agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Mosley (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) need Mulder’s experience working with psychics to help them track down a missing agent. Whitney and Joiner are working with former priest Father Joe Crissman (Billy Connolly), a convicted pedophile, who claims to have had visions of the missing agent and other women in the West Virginia area. Mulder reluctantly joins the investigation in exchange for his crimes being forgiven and begins to suspect that Father Joe’s gift is real. Scully is less convinced, but the pair get involved in the search for the missing agent and other kidnapped women who turn out to be at the mercy of an organ harvesting operation that also involves a Dr. Frankenstein surrogate experimenting with human body parts.
Let’s talk about the differences between the original film and the new Vrach Frankensteyn version. I watched both films side by side to see what changes and additions writer/director Chris Carter made to realize his vision, which the studio and censors had compromised. At ten minutes shorter, the biggest cuts are two brief scenes early in the film. The first showed Mulder and Scully when they first arrived at the FBI. In the theatrical cut, the camera focuses on a framed portrait of President George W. Bush while the iconic series theme plays, teasing that only supernatural shenanigans could have gotten him elected. That moment is completely gone. The joke was very specific to the 2008 release, and with the elections since then, it no longer seems as funny. The other scene comes a few minutes later as Mulder and Scully lie in bed together talking about Scully’s juvenile patient, followed by some autopsy results. In the theatrical cut, Mulder cuddles with Scully and lightens the mood with some romantic flirting. The bed scene still exists, but the flirting and cuddling are gone, leaving the Mulder-Scully chemistry more platonic than romantic despite the awkward post-credits scene of the pair in swimsuits boating in a tropical paradise.
The remaining changes to the film are predominantly in the editing of scenes featuring the organ-harvesting surgeries. It has long been an editor’s trick to try and reduce an MPA rating to the more desirable PG-13 by trimming seconds off of bloody shots of bodies or placing frames of scenes intercut with the surgical scenes to shorten the duration of any one shot on screen. The content of The X-Files: I Want To Believe remains the same but the order of these scenes has changed ever so slightly. The only other noticeable changes include a surgery performed on Scully’s patient involving stem cells that now has a different song accompanying it as well as the removal of scenes showing Mulder retracing snowy crime scenes. In fact, the scenes of Mulder overlooking a cliff in the original cut looked to have been added via green screen and was likely put in to pad the running time to get the initial R-rating down.
The arbitrary nature of what constitutes an R-rating versus a PG-13 has been debated online and in the film community for years and has shifted considerably as tastes have matured. The lack of profanity in The X-Files: I Want To Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn leaves a film that is no more gory or disturbing than the average episode of NCIS or CSI. There have been more disturbing and horror-themed episodes of The X-Files than this movie and the promise of Chris Carter that he was restoring the horror elements to make this his original vision should have come with more disclaimers as to what he was actually restoring to his director’s cut of the film. There have been countless debates over the years between what director’s cuts are great and which ones are unnecessary and Vrach Frankenshteyn easily ranks as the most useless revision of a film ever. The longer title is the only thing that was actually added to this cut of the film.
As a lifelong, die-hard fan of The X-Files, it pains me to write this review. I wanted so badly for The X-Files: I Want To Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn to be a redemption for the underwhelming sequel. Chris Carter, as a filmmaker, has never been the strongest and his work on the two-season revival of The X-Files shows that maybe he should leave the franchise in more capable hands. With Ryan Coogler’s new take on The X-Files next up for the franchise, I hope that there is still room for David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s iconic duo to return in some capacity. Otherwise, The X-Files: I Want To Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn will be another whimper of an ending for a series that originally went out on a high note. The truth is out there, it just isn’t in this movie.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn premieres on August 14th on Hulu.
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