The X Files: I Want to Believe

Stars: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet, Callum Keith Rennie, Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner

Director: Chris Carter

This dull and boring movie could spell the end of the X Files franchise, which seems to have run its course. And it hasn't even that much to do with the paranormal, apart from Connelly's paedophile psychic.

Writer-directer Carter, clearly running low on ideas, appears to have borrowed from an old Bela Lugosi movie, The Case of the Missing Brides, as women are kidnapped to provide blood and bits in a Frankenstein-type experiment to restore life to some decrepit old body.

Anderson at least gives it some welly, but Duchovny seems to be on autopilot. And Peet and - particularly - Xzibit must go down as two of the least likely FBI agents on record. Connolly wanders in and out of the film giving clues to the whereabouts of bodies, but the action is sluggish and confused and only a subplot involving Anderson as a doctor trying to save the life of a very sick boy really sparks the interest. The wintry settings merely serve to further drain energy from the film faster than the blood disappears from its kidnap victims.

David Quinlan

USA 2008. UK Distributor: 20th Century Fox. Colour by deluxe.
104 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 27 Jul 2008