Although The X-Files: I Want to Believe fared decently at the box office, critics attached the 2008 film as “baggy, draggy, oddly timed and strangely off the mark” (The New York Times), “basically TV writ large” (New York Post), and “in not knowing who
it needs to please, I Want to Believe pleases no one” (Rolling Stone). What filmmaker Chris Carter believes (or wants to believe) is that concessions he had to make to get a PG-13 rating stymied the plot, so he has given the film a director’s cut to reintroduce horror-movie elements to the picture, now rated R and retitled The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn. The director’s cut and its Russian approximation of Victor Frankenstein’s name will premiere on Disney+ and Hulu on Aug. 14.
A trailer for Vrach Frankenshteyn shows the reunion of Agents Mulder and Scully (with the additional horror element of David Duchovny’s beard) as well as Bernard Herrmann-esque strings squealing as a face peers out from beneath ice. In another scene, a woman screams, “Please let me out of here” from inside a box. There’s plenty of gore and in one of the trailer’s scenes, Gillian Anderson’s Scully remarks, “I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore, Mulder.” The trailer is certainly scarier than the 2008 trailer.
The film follows Mulder and Scully as they attempt to solve a series of abductions with the help of a defrocked priest (Billy Connolly) who claims to be psychic. “This R-rated version represents the film Chris always envisioned — a darker, frightening thriller exploring a real-life Dr. Frankenstein,” Hulu said in a statement. “The restoration gives fans a chance to experience a side of the film that has never been seen before.” For comparison’s sake, Hulu and Disney+ will also be streaming the original I Want to Believe on the same day.
The X-Files returned for an 11th and final season in 2018.
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