TYPED-OUT LETTERS: Press Screening, San Francisco, 12:02pm: In a snow-covered house, purportedly West Virginia but clearly British Columbia, a woman is dragged off to certain doom by bald assailants. Director Chris Carter teases us a bit—in shadowy profile, this victim looks a bit like Gillian Anderson. San Francisco, 12:07pm: Billy Connolly leads a team of snow-pokers through the snow pack to poke something. After a while, Connolly drops to his knees, and the snow-pokers dig up a human arm severed at the shoulder joint.

San Francisco, Either the Movie Is Dead or My Watch Has Stopped: This chronically date-and-time-stamped yet-way-past-its-sell-date revisit to the TV series turns out to be as much of an agnostic's crucible as Brideshead Revisited. The crowd wanted to see Scully and Mulder wrestle with each other, not with their faith. I wish the romance did win out—Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) seem more like bundlers than lovers. Snuggling up in bed, Mulder muffles Scully in a bushy beard that it takes him forever to shave.

The main plot is ludicrous. The villain is some kind of Russian maniac who never even gets a mad scientist speech. To say more would be both spoiling the plot and courting disbelief. The subtitle warns us: "I Want to Believe." The torture test to the duo's credulity is Connolly's character, a priest who has psychic visions and bloody eye stigmata. Is it possible that Father Joe, this sinner, this breaker of his sacred vows, has secret contact with the Eternal?

Since we're on the subject of religion, let's paraphrase Jesus: In The X--Files: I Want to Believe Scully and Mulder strain on a gnat after swallowing a camel. The two swallowed a pack of camels during their many seasons on the air. Fretting terribly over whether the psychic Father Joe is fake—after he gives them excellent evidence that he's the real thing—is not nearly grand enough material for these paranormal adventurers. It takes forever to get their game afoot, with many protestations of how they can't handle it all. "I'm done chasing monsters in the dark," says Scully. She has a new job as a pediatric brain surgeon at a Catholic hospital, treating a child who might be cured by stem cells—and that's another faith-based squabble squeezed into this film.

As FBI agents, Amanda Peet and Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner look ready to take on an army of serial killers, but both get swept aside. A photo of George W. Bush makes a quick appearance with The X-Files theme song piping behind it, and the audience gets a cheap laugh. This, when a bolder kind of plot could have made them gasp; why shouldn't the current political mess be the result of demons, aliens or alien demons? Paranoia is perhaps at an all-time high in the United States. Rich material for worry is overlooked in favor of a bestsellerish spiritual adventure: it's as if David Fincher had directed a Lifetime Channel movie. Carter's film is inept on basic levels: You can't really tell where the two leads are living, let alone more major details. And the dingy photography glows for only a moment or two, when Anderson's fine red hair is silhouetted against the snow.

THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE (PG-13; 100 min.), directed by Chris Carter, written by Frank Spotnitz and Carter, photographed by Bill Roe and starring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, plays valleywide.

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