Creepy, complex and compelling

X-Files creator Chris Carter must see something sinister about the cold. I remember the TV series as being almost always set in a cloudy place of perpetual chill. He also seems to have this thing about snow, white, pristine and shining but hiding dark secrets.

In the first big screen version of the X-Files, Fight the Future from 10 years ago, Fox Mulder played by David Duchovny, trudged through a huge snow-covered field to get to the underground station where Dana Scully played by Gillian Anderson, is being held captive.

Now with I Want to Believe, the second picture based on the series, X-Files is still adrift in the cold. Carter has turned a snowplough into a deadly weapon and left Mulder out in a blizzard. He also has a FBI team following an old man through another huge snow-covered field. There, they will find not Scully, but bits and pieces of a human puzzle.

X-Files was a cultural phenomenon while on the air in the ‘90s. It dealt with alien invasions and abductions and to what extent the government would go by way of cover-ups. Mulder, whose sister was supposedly taken by aliens, was the believer. Scully, a doctor by profession, was the skeptical scientist. Together, they kept TV viewers glued to the sets with events and theories that lay waste the disbelief.

Such is the puzzle that needs solving in I Want to Believe. It is an unusual case with shades of the paranormal, something that is the expertise of former agents Mulder and Scully. FBI has long ago given up on those but with people disappearing and body parts turning up, the Bureau in secret and with some reluctance, decides to ask them back.

The movie is set six years after the series went off the air and it has also been six years since Mulder and Scully left their old jobs. Because of his strange beliefs and obsessive pursuit of the paranormal, Mulder has lost his credibility as an agent and turned recluse. The ever pragmatic Scully is now a famous surgeon. They have no interest in working with the FBI again but they are needed and they agree to help.

It is a good thing that Mulder and Scully were prevailed upon to change their minds because there can be no X-Files without these two. They are the cerebral Mr. & Mrs. Smith of Sci-Fi. They are cool and attractive but constantly at odds mentally and emotionally.

Every week of the series was a battle between fact and instinct and between strong physical attraction and propriety. They have not changed one bit and one of the joys of watching the film is feeling this pair’s charisma and seeing the ease with which Duchovny and Anderson assume their old roles. Take note Duchovny and Anderson are as indispensable to X-Files as Mulder and Scully.

They are not working alone this time around though. There is Father Joe, a convicted pedophile with psychic powers who is eager to help. He is the one who kicks off the puzzle solving when he points the agents to the exact place where a human arm is buried in the field of snow. Like Mulder, he believes and like before, Scully is determined not to and wants to prove him a fraud.

Father Joe played brilliantly by the Scottish actor Billy Connelly introduces the element of religious faith into the X-Files. He is a priest who has betrayed his vocation so why should he be singled out for the visions. But then that might just be the reason he had been and he descends lower into his own hell as he struggles to understand what might be a sign of his redemption.

In typical X-Files manner, Carter leaves this conflict unresolved. Had this been TV we might get the answer next week. Or he might have already given it and like Scully we just did not see it or you might have missed it when you bent your head to check on your popcorn.

The truth is there is so much to see and understand in I Want to Believe that my advice is to lay off looking or listening to anything else while watching the picture.

Amazingly Carter has created a creepy, complex thriller without one explosion or a single gunshot wound. Doubly amazingly, here is a sci-fi flick of compelling performances without a single gargantuan villain in sight. And even more amazingly he has laid down suspense so thick you want to go off and slice it with a knife.

Of course you won’t. Because there is no telling what you will find under.