The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a 2008 American supernatural thriller film directed by Chris Carter and written by both Carter and Frank Spotnitz. It is the second feature film installment of The X-Files franchise created by Carter, following the 1998 film. Three main actors from the television series, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and Mitch Pileggi, reappear in the film to reprise their respective roles as Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Walter Skinner.

Unlike the first film, the plot does not focus on the series' ongoing extraterrestrial-based mytharc themes, but instead works as a standalone thriller horror story, like many of the monster-of-the-week episodes frequently seen in the TV series, as well as focusing on the personal relationship between Mulder and Scully. The story follows Mulder and Scully who have been out of the FBI for several years, with Mulder living in isolation and Scully having become a doctor at a Catholic hospital, where she has formed a bond with a critically ill child patient. When an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped and a former Catholic priest who has been convicted of pedophelia claims to be experiencing psychic visions of the endangered agent, Scully is asked to bring Mulder back to the bureau to consult on the case because of his work with psychics. The narrative goes through the push and pull of his at-first reluctant involvement and Scully’s attempts to stay out of it.

The film was first anticipated in November 2001 to follow the conclusion of the ninth season of the television series, but it remained in development hell for six years before entering production in December 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The film premiered on July 23, 2008, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood before opening theatrically two days later on July 25. The worldwide gross was $68.4 million from a $30 million budget. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes praises the chemistry between Duchovny and Anderson but criticizes the plot.

Dana Scully, a former FBI agent, is now a staff physician at a Catholic hospital; she is treating Christian, a young boy with symptoms similar to Sandhoff disease. FBI agent Mosely Drummy approaches Scully for help in locating her former partner, Fox Mulder, who has been in hiding as a fugitive for several years. Drummy states that the FBI will call off its manhunt for Mulder if he helps investigate the disappearances of several women in West Virginia, the latest of whom is a young FBI agent named Monica Bannan. Scully agrees and convinces a reluctant Mulder to help.

The duo are taken to Washington, D.C., where Agent Dakota Whitney requests Mulder's expertise with the paranormal as they have been led to a clue, a severed human arm, by Father Joseph Fitzpatrick Crissman. He is a former priest defrocked for the molestation of thirty-seven altar boys, and claims God is sending him visions of the crimes. A second woman, driving home after swimming in a natatorium, is run off the road by a truck driven by Janke Dacyshyn, who then abducts her. Father Joe is again recruited for help with the second abducted woman. After a grueling nighttime search in a snow-covered field, he leads the FBI to what turns out to be a frozen burial ground of people and body parts. Analysis of the remains, along with tracking down the recent movements from the second abducted woman's car crash, eventually leads them to Dacyshyn, an organ transporter in Richmond, Virginia, and his husband, Franz Tomczeszyn, who was among the youths Father Joe sexually abused.

During an FBI raid on the organ donor facility where Dacyshyn works, he escapes, leaving Bannan's severed head at the scene. Mulder, who accompanied Whitney on the raid, chases Dacyshyn to a building construction site. Whitney follows and is killed when Dacyshyn pushes her down an elevator shaft. Scully, seeking a resolution, asks Joe, who has not yet heard of the discovery of Bannan's head, if he senses that she is still alive. He replies that she is. Discouraged but still determined, Mulder decides to investigate the incidents further. He drives Scully's car to Nutter's Feed Store in a small town near the abductions, as the human remains contain acepromazine, an animal tranquilizer. When Dacyshyn coincidentally arrives moments later, Mulder slips out and follows him. Dacyshyn notices him, however, and runs his car off the road. Mulder survives and manages to tail Dacyshyn, who exits his truck after the engine fails, to a small compound in a former barn. Mulder enters, and the commotion caused by a two-headed guard dog brings Dacyshyn out from one of the buildings. The compound is being used by an Eastern European medical team that has been murdering people and stealing their organs for years. The field where Father Joe had earlier discovered the bodies turned out to be their dumping ground. Mulder enters the building to find that the team has been using the organs and body parts to keep Tomczeszyn alive. At that moment, they attempt to place Tomczeszyn's head on the body of the second abducted woman. Mulder tries to save her from the gruesome fate, but a doctor comes from behind and injects him with a tranquilizer. Helpless, Mulder is taken outside to be murdered by Dacyshyn.

Scully, unable to reach Mulder on his cell phone, contacts her old FBI superior, Walter Skinner, for help. They trilaterate the phone's location and find Scully's wrecked car, eventually making their way through the snow to find the compound as Mulder is about to be axed by Dacyshyn. Scully attacks him in an ensuing confrontation, incapacitating him, while Skinner breaks up the medical procedure before the young woman is beheaded. Later, Mulder is at home when Scully tells him Father Joe has died. It happened at the same moment, Mulder notes, that Scully disconnected the life support to Tomczeszyn's severed head. Somehow, he surmises, the two men's fates were linked by more than just visions.

In a post-credits scene, Mulder and Scully head across the sea towards a tropical island in a row boat, waving to the camera above.