Rating -

Thriller (US); 1998; Rated PG-13

Cast
David Duchovny: Special Agent Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson: Special Agent Dana Scully
Martin Landau: Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil
Blythe Danner: Jana Cassidy
Armin Mueller-Stahl: Conrad Strughold
Lucas Black: Stevie
Tom Braidwood: Frohike
William B. Davis: Cancer

Produced by Chris Carter, Lata Ryan, Daniel Sackheim and Frank Spotnitz; Directed by Rob Bowman; Screenwritten by Chris Carter

Review Uploaded
8/19/98

What a time I had at "The X-Files." Seeing it on its opening day was a strange experience, indeed mainly because of the audience. The turnout was so large that I was literally stunned. Hundreds of people went to great lengths to ensure a seat at the opening performance on June 19, 1998.

They were not disappointed. "The X-Files" delivered what the television show it spawned off of could not--nail-biting plot mixed in with great characters, colorful dialogue, spine chills and intelligent scripting. Chris Carter, the writer of the movie and television series, has gone great lengths here to succeed in creating a movie that his series fans could enjoy, and those lengths can't often be reached, as we see in how complicated the film is. The script is so direct and precise and mysterious that not only was I enthralled about the characters and the plot twists, but the movie ran hundreds of complicated questions through my mind, to the point where I was almost inspired to try the TV series again. What do I have to say to Mr. Carter for this? Bravo!

The movie mainly succeeds due to the efforts of its two main characters: Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Andersen). Here are two of the most complex people we could ever meet in a film; they carry a fire for their work, and obviously for each other, if you notice how they treat each other--you can see how Dana's eyes glow, and how Fox's smile shines. Without these two characters, I imagine, the movie would be of no character value.

The story Chris Carter tells us is a quite complex one: in the opening scenes of the film, we are taken back to an ice age, where an alien race finds refuge in an icy cave of early human beings. When one of them bleeds, the blood seeps up into the body of a human, which transcends him into an alien-being himself.

As we learn later in the movie, this cave exists today. Mulder and Scully themselves think they know some sort of alien intelligence lives within it, but the government is so clever that they manage to cover up every single track before the pair can even conclude a theory.

Most of the movie concentrates on this prospect of a cover-up from the suspicious special agents, which all ends in Antarctica, a place where Scully is taken after infected with an alien virus, below the surface in a government-hidden alien space craft that is indeed a feast for the eyes.

Colors after colors illuminate off of the sets here, in which Mulder rescues Scully with the alien virus vaccination given to him earlier on by a squealing government official. The film reaches its climax by exposing Mulder and Scully's eyes to the ship as it escapes from the ground it rested upon years ago.

The movie ends with its only weakness: the fact that mankind does not move and more forward from this ordeal to know the truth. Okay, so the television succeeds because of this constant factor, but let's face it: this is the movies, and we don't often want to see movies that have no serious difference from the television show that they were spawned off of.

But nonetheless, the movie offers some great surprises. The alien beings themselves could be the focus of a movie all on their own, and often reminded me of the "Alien" pictures. Chris Carter has his gift to be thankful for, because I have not seen very many scripts for the movies that are this complex yet not so reliable on plot twists to keep things interesting. The movie has no real big surprises, but it does manage to drop some jaws and lift some eyebrows for most of the time.

By the end of the picture I was almost in a frenzy to see the television show, after experiencing this two-hour nostalgic thriller that manages to make use of the limitations the series brought on. Only if mankind had been affected by this 'fight for the future,' "The X-Files" film would have been a four star extravaganza.