Ladies and Gentlemen: draw nigh that you may hear the proclamation of this momentous of occasions! Let the word go forth to all that needs to hear, from the lowest village to the highest parapet, that on August 17th ‘Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace’ shall henceforth no longer be known as the worst piece of shit ever to result from the attempted rejuvenation of a well known sci-fi franchise!
Yeah it’s that bad.
‘The X Files: I Want to Bel’- no scrap that: ‘The X Files: I Want My Money Back’ is an absolute marvel of bad film making. It has a god awful screenplay, bland direction, wafer thin characters, ghastly acting and a story that manages to be hysterically horrible despite the fact that nothing remotely interesting ever fucking happens. It has no climax, it has no hook, it has no real arcs to speak of and it doesn’t have a single memorable scene or intriguing idea in its body…NOTHING! I can’t remember seeing a movie this awful in my recent life.
Anyway, do you remember how the X Files ended? Yeah, me neither but that doesn’t matter seeing as no one cares. Short version- the same deal is going on but they are no longer FBI agents and I assume they’ve been sleeping together for a while. Scully still doesn’t believe in the crazy weird shit but she’s Catholic and Moulder believes in all the crazy weird shit but thinks religion is hogwash… because that’s called ‘depth’.
So, Scully is a doctor now working in a Catholic hospital and she’s trying to cure some kid from movie cancer whilst Moulder is... hanging around the house clipping articles, I guess. Aww, remember the 90’s where paranoid obsessives were cool heroes instead of incredible douche-bags?
Anyway, the FBI contacts the paranormal specialist to come back and work on a missing person’s case in Virginia. See, they are missing an agent and their only leads are coming from a crazy ex-priest who claims he is getting visions from God and they want Moulder to tell them he’s the real deal. There’s some doubt you see as the ‘ex’ in ‘ex-priest’ is because this guy happens to have molested 37 alter boys… just so you know, the movie doesn’t get less icky from thereon out.
Without giving anything major away the creepy magical priest keeps finding buried body parts and it’s got something to do with Black Market organs but not really because this is the X-files so it has to be weird but not too weird because god-forbid you go all out for the fucking movie which has been ten years in the making…I’ll stop here before I go off on a crazy tangent.
You know what really dropped my jaw about this film? Just how icky, sleazy, blunt and mean spirited it is. The whole thing is just in really bad taste and for no discernable reason (for fucks sake even Hostel has a point!) and I’m pretty comfortable in saying that whatever side of the culture war you find yourself on the ‘topical’ parts of this movie are probably going to have you grinding the fuck out of your teeth either way. Conservatives: let me tell you, the paedophile priest is actually the nicest member of the clergy we get to meet in the movie and liberals… I’m not going to give out full details but you’re not going to like it either. It’s not that I have anything against poking fun at religion or politically incorrect bad guys; it’s just there is no point to this- the result ends up being grimy, sleazy and rather homophobic. More to the point; it’s just totally devoid of nuance and substance. For example, at one point when Moulder and Scully show up at the FBI building again they pass a customary picture of the president, they exchange a glance and then the camera puts the picture of G.W in the frame and plays the all-so spooky X-Files whistle chord. I wish I were kidding! Look, I can’t stand the guy and I thought this was a lame gag; it’s a total out of the movie dumb, lame bit and a bad sign of things to come of just how cheesy this movie gets.
Honestly, I’m at a loss for words- I have not been this awestruck that a movie turned out this bad since Transformers- Mamma Mia is a thousand times better than this shit. How did this happen? How did they wait ten fucking years to make this?! There’s just no movie here! Even as laughably close as it comes to a ‘big reveal’, it’s too easy to figure out and then it doesn’t do anything cool. The whole movie just sits there, as though we’re supposed to be satisfied that Moulder and Scully have returned to our screens just to talk about belief.
Hey, you wanna know what I believe? I want to believe that the real X-Files movie is good and I only dreamed seeing this shit!