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X-Files: I Want To Believe * Chris Carter * 2008

It must have been about 15 years ago when my younger brother watched this weird new series on tv. They were shown late at night on the BBC (not on Dutch television yet). It took a few episodes before I started to like the series, so I only ‘really’ joined halfway the first series. The next year, the series were also broadcasted on Dutch television, the BBC continued with the second series. I was hooked, kept following the series and tried to tape each and every episode. I still have most of them on VHS. After three series, the channels started to become sloppy. Dutch television didn’t stick to the actual order, the BBC jumped back and forth between different series. When the craze started, I bought all those VHS tapes with double episodes made into one, etc. and a t-shirt with the idea to wear when everybody forgot about the X-Files (…). After a while, the tapes were not so easily accessible anymore and since there was no internet yet, I had a hard time trying to maintain my collection. At a certain point Chris Carter started to experiment a little. There were crazy episodes with bizarre stories and weird humour, but as you all know, after a pregnancy and some more series, the main actors started to think that it was about enough. A film was made (not too great, and apparently this is so long ago that I have no review of it in these pages), both Duchovny and Anderson appeared less and less in the shows and eventually got replaced. Carter’s ‘spinnoff’s (“Millenium” and ‘the Lone Gunmen’ also seem to have had a short spinnoff) had not the success of the X-Files and the series didn’t get as much attention as in the past. TV channels moved the series back to impossible times of the day, skipped episodes or even complete series and people like myself stopped following the whole thing. I don’t think that I have seen more than two or three episodes after Mulder and Scully were away. Now suddenly after all these years, there is a new film (and a box with all nine series that do do consider buying). Duchovny and Anderson were contracted again and inspite (or because?) of all the bad reviews, I decided to see what Chris Carter came up with to revive the hype.
Well, I think he won’t revive it. The film is just an average thriller with almost no X-Files elements, save Mulder, Scully and one other character from the series. No UFOs, nothing about the ‘main story’, just a bunch of clichés and a worked out thing that has always been a suggestion in the series. There is close to nothing the seasoned viewer will recognise that somebody who never saw the X-Files does not. Too bad, like I read in another review, Carter will disappoint ‘old fans’ and will not gain new ‘fans’ for the series, since these have little to do with this film.
-1.5-

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