For good or for bad, the Zack Snyder Effect is alive and well within Hollywood. While movie studios previously released director’s cuts long before 2021, the DCEU filmmaker reintroduced the public to the process by dropping a black-and-white version of his superhero vision in Zack Snyder’s Justice League to cheers among the comic-book crowd. Ever since, fans have clamored for more director’s cuts of pop-culture franchises (usually those that have underperformed at the box office).

Now, 18 years after its original release, TV series creator Chris Carter gets his own director’s cut of the first big-screen sequel to The X-Files.

Releasing The X-Files as an R-rated horror movie spin-off might have done well… 20 years ago, as it was originally intended. However, ongoing lawsuits, production delays and executive interference originally delayed its release, but now, through the release of streaming technology, fans finally get to witness the filmmaker’s true intentions for the subject matter.

Unlike the series’ first big-screen endeavor, Fight the Future, which mainly followed the show’s mythology aspects (read: alien invasion), I Want to Believe focuses on another type of storyline popularized by the series: the monster of the week. As a standalone story, our favorite characters are no longer confined by the rules of the U.S. government: Dana Scully’s (portrayed by Gillian Anderson) an acting doctor at a Catholic hospital, while Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) has been laying low, isolated with his supernatural files.

Taking place six years after the show’s original conclusion (Season 9’s final airdate was back in 2002) Mulder returns to aid a missing young agent at the behest of Scully, working hand-in-hand with a psychic, Father Joe (Billy Connolly), who happens to be a former Catholic priest and now a convicted pedophile. Credibility is top priority for the FBI, while questioning Mulder and Scully’s so often in the past (while needing their help, now).

Scully’s skeptic comes in hot, as the character questions her innermost beliefs, while Mulder, the believer, does his best to coax the questionable facts to the finish line. The truth may be out there, but it’s definitely messy getting the final product.

“I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore, Mulder. I cannot stand what it does to you or to me.”

Series Creator Chris Carter breathes new life into his spooky series with his director’s cut, The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn.

So, the monster, this time around, is a sex offender seeing visions? Seems like quite a highly successful money-making prospect to extend the series’ popularity. End sarcasm. However, the moody atmosphere and its complementary lighting highlights the location, which was filmed in Canada (home of the first three seasons of the television show, before moving to L.A.). Mark Snow always does a great job with his exceptional music composition to ramp up the eerie factor in all of Carter’s series (Rest in Peace, Mark, who passed away on July 4, 2025). The additions of Amanda Peet and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner didn’t sell too many tickets for non-fans of the franchise, but the highlight of the film is definitely Mulder and Scully’s front-and-center relationship.

Chris Carter’s killer storyline is a “Frankenstein” of parts: a bunch of individual elements that don’t quite add up to the sum total of the whole (re: a complete feature film). As a life-long X-Phile, I found the story interesting (at the time), but it could have just as easily been a two-part episode airing on TV.

Having not seen the film in possibly decades, I could not remember which of the deleted scenes were added, but I assume they dealt with organ harvesting and a death, which are a little bloody for basic cable, but none of the scenes are gory or excessive in any sort of way. Their exclusion details just how contextual the ratings board and the production company really are.

Long before Barenaked Ladies promoted the theory, I was watching The X-Files with no lights on from the pilot’s original airdate (and refuse to do so, otherwise, to this day). I didn’t remember the mid-credits scene in this film, but it’s in there as a coda, so that’s that. Originally, I believed the entire 2018 film would have served Chris Carter’s companion series, Millennium, much better as a feature film, featuring Lance Henriksen’s Frank Black instead of Mulder and Scully. Instead, both franchises’ future prospects somewhat dimmed, if only briefly. I still believe it.

Another reason why The X-Files has a “Frankenstein” problem is due to filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s intention to reboot the ’90s series. While the pilot has yet to air, speculation centers on all-new FBI agents getting assigned to the long-shuttered division that focuses on unexplained and paranormal aspects. How Mulder and Scully work their way into the series is also currently undecided. There are also rumblings about somehow spinning off the original agents’ exploits into a separate series as the intellectual property currently feels red hot after years of serving up nothingburgers.

If nothing else, The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn might prove to be a factor in bringing a little more relevance to a once-retired franchise, even if its final product feels like a misstep spinoff. I truly want to believe there are better days ahead of my once-favorite TV show, which has now become the ultimate My Guilty Pleasure.

“I’ve been too long away from this business… or not long enough.”