I was a huge fan of the series. Not because it always made sense, nor was I a believer, since I am too much a sceptic to go down the conspiracy road. But hey, we are talking about entertainment here, and the series was that in spades, largely because of the chemistry between the diminutive but perfect Gillian Anderson, and the Sarcastic but believable David Duchovny. The first film ‘X-Files: Fight the Future’ was something of a hit and miss exercise, though I was impressed by the visuals, the target audience was vague as the climax, so has time been kind to the FBI’s hidden truth seekers, or has the charm and chemistry waned?

The initial shock for me was that Billy Connelly was in it, and not only that, but he plays a Catholic priest, Father Joe, whose torment is that he is, or was, a paedophile who has visions regarding the case that sucks Mulder and Scully out of their new life, and back into an FBI investigation of a missing agent. The movie starts quite darkly, as you might expect, with the staging of the initial disappearance of an agent, and the engagement of first Scully then Mulder to try and locate the missing person who is deemed to be alive by Father Joe. Mulder and Scully are no longer with the FBI, rather he is ‘wanted’ by them, though not very much, because he is hardly hidden as Scully – now a doctor - proves by a short drive to dig him out. His reluctance is short-lived, and once on board you anticipate the old Mulder will be throwing his spooky ideas around and generally getting into places and defying authorities that he should not. Sadly, this is not the case.

The film runs out of coherence at around the 20 minute mark, the film has precious little humour, which made the series a great watch, and the storyline seems to have been sacrificed along with any pretensions of effort of the old X-Files conspiracy and corporate skulduggery, it is really a serial killer thriller. The problem is that in such a straight down the line movie, the values that made for the spooky team involvement are just not there, any investigator could have done this and it would have been a half hearted effort even then, here is was just like a bad episode of the series stretched out way too far.

3.0/10, This time I hope Chris Carter leaves it alone, it was a disaster, and cheapens the franchise, one of the biggest let downs in recent memory. I still want to believe, but the truth, wherever it is, is certainly not in this lacklustre effort.