A spooky gem from Chris Carter

After just two weeks, The X-Files: I Want to Believe is tanking so badly at the box office that Deb and I had one helluva time last night finding it playing in our area. And then, there were only two daily screenings scheduled. I blame this lack of interest on two things. First, the movie should have been released in the fall, far away from The Dark Knight and the latest Mummy extravaganza. Second, I think creator-director Chris Carter’s obsessive secretiveness about the film did it in. Many of us didn’t even know until the last minute that a new X-Files movie was coming out this summer. The film's marketing sucked, and advance word about it didn’t exist.

All of this is a shame, because despite what you may have heard from alleged fans, The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a spooky gem. Were it a TV episode broadcast during the original series’ run, we X-Philes would give it high marks. If it was a pilot for a new TV series debuting next month, we’d all be singing its praises right now. The story is solid and offers a good mystery. The chemistry between Duchovny and Anderson is absolutely still there. The show’s over-the-top, oddball element is still there. Hell, even Skinner is still there, and my wife and I giggled like school kids when he made his appearance.

I wanna believe there will be another X-Files movie someday. But even if that never happens, I’ve still got this wonderful coda to the old TV series to watch again and again.