Who hasn't walked into a movie late and tried desperately to catch up with the plot, to make sense of what's on the screen? For those not washed in the blood, that's what it's like to watch "The X-Files" movie. Except instead of being only momentarily tardy, we're five years behind the curve.
That's how long the popular cult TV show has been on the Fox network. And despite impressive billboards for the movie insisting "Only in Theaters," only those familiar with the small-screen series will get many of the film's characters and references. Despite attempts to make "The X-Files" palatable to nonbelievers, its creators couldn't resist a series of complicit winks to the cognoscenti that can only irritate those not in the know.
"The X-Files" movie is put together by many of the same people responsible for the series, starting with writer-producer Chris Carter, the show's creator. Director Rob Bowman has directed 25 episodes over five years, and editor Stephen Mark and composer Mark Snow are both veterans as well. So it's not surprising that what we've got here is essentially a big-budget version of the small screen, kind of a "Triple-X-Files" to reward the faithful.
With its shrewd mixture of paranoia and the paranormal, the way its elaborate mythology combines enigmatic phenomena with potent cabals intent on running the world, "The X-Files" experience resembles "Twin Peaks" crossed with "The Twilight Zone." It's even replete with recurring characters without real names: Who is the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) after all but the Log Lady with a bad nicotine habit?
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At the heart of things are Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a pair of FBI agents usually assigned to investigate the inexplicable. The film awkwardly attempts to fill in five years' worth of back story on this pair, letting us know that Mulder is the true believer who thinks his sister was abducted by aliens, while Scully is the cool, unflappable rationalist, someone not quick to believe sinister forces are out to control the universe.
When the movie opens, Mulder and Scully have been reassigned to an anti-terrorism unit in the Dallas FBI bureau, the X-Files having been officially closed. While they're trying to prevent a major bomb from going off, something seriously weird is going on in a small town in rural Texas.
