Trust no one, but the truth is out there! Our next cut from the selection is the big screen adaptation of the hit TV show, The X-Files. Taking place in the X-Files time line chronologically between season five and six, we follow FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in their ongoing quest for the truth. The film opens in 35,000 B.C. During the Ice Age, in an area what will become North Texas. Two cavemen hunters encounter a large extraterrestrial life form in a cave, which kills one and infects the other with a black oil-like substance. In 1998, in the same area, a boy falls into a hole and is also infected by a black substance which seeps from the ground and firefighters who enter the hole to rescue him do not come out of the hole either. A team of men wearing hazmat suits arrive and extract the bodies of the boy and the firefighters. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully, are investigating a bomb threat against a federal building in Dallas and discover the bomb in a building across the street. As the building is evacuated, the Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud remains to disarm the bomb. However, he simply waits for the bomb to detonate.
Mulder and Scully are later chewed out because, in addition to Michaud, four other people were in the building during the bombing. That evening Mulder is accosted by a paranoid doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil, who explains that the “victims” were already dead, and that the bombing was staged to cover up how they died. At the hospital morgue, Scully is able to examine one of the victims, finding evidence of an alien virus. Meanwhile, the Cigarette Smoking Man goes to Texas, where Dr. Ben Bronschweig shows him one of the lost firefighters, who has an alien organism residing inside his body. He orders him to administer a vaccine to it, but to burn the body if it fails. Later, the alien organism unexpectedly gestates and kills Bronschweig. Mulder and Scully travel to the crime scene, where they find the site has been hastily turned into a new playground and encounter the boys whose friend fell into the hole. Following their direction, the pair follow a train to a large cornfield surrounding two glowing domes. Inside the domes, grates in the floor open and swarms of bees fly out. The agents flee, chased by black helicopters, but manage to escape.
After returning to D.C., Scully attends a performance hearing, after which she is transferred. Mulder is devastated to lose his partner. The two are about to share a kiss when Scully is stung by a bee which had lodged itself under her shirt collar; she quickly falls unconscious while Mulder calls paramedics, but the driver of the ambulance shoots Mulder and whisks Scully away. Mulder, not severely injured, slips out of hospital with the help of The Lone Gunmen and FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner. He then meets a former enemy, the Well-Manicured Man, who gives him Scully’s location, along with a vaccine against the virus that has infected her. As Mulder leaves, the Well-Manicured Man kills himself in a car bomb, before his betrayal of The Syndicate is discovered. Will Mulder make it to Scully in time to save her and what will he find?
Now, I’m a big X-Files fan. I watched it from the beginning and have always enjoyed it, despite some of the dips in quality in the later seasons, but will always enjoy delving back into the files. When this was announced, I remember looking forward to seeing it at the cinema and came away enjoying it. Given we had to wait a while between seasons, It was great to have something to fill the gap, and also how it would follow on into season six and flesh out some more of the shows mythology. Duchovny and Anderson excel as usual in their roles, and Martin Landau puts in an entertaining turn as Doctor Kurtzweil, stoking the paranoia whilst trying to help Mulder find the truth.
The show would run for a further four seasons after this movie, ending at season nine in 2002 with it’s finale being a highly awaited event, which ultimately would be a bit of let down after all the build up. We would get another movie, X-Files: I Want to Believe in 2008, with Mulder and Scully reuniting to investigate a missing persons case. The series would return in 2016 for another two series, giving us X-Files fans another hit of spooky shenanigans. One thing I’m planning to do at some point is go back and do a complete marathon of episodes and movies, 218 episodes and 2 movies, might be an idea for another blog along the way…
Dan Dared 