The X-Files Is Bringing Its Most Forgettable Movie Back From the Dead

I was never a huge X-Files fan, but I did see both movies in the theater. I remember the first one. I remember absolutely nothing about The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Not one scene, one scare or even the basic plot. According to my old memory banks, I bought a ticket, sat in the theater for two hours and then somebody erased the entire experience on my way back to the car.

That might be about to change. Chris Carter’s new R-rated director’s cut, titled The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn, finally has a trailer and will begin streaming on Hulu on August 14. The extra words in the title translate to “Doctor Frankenstein,” which gives you a pretty good idea of the kind of movie Carter says he was originally trying to make.

The 2008 movie brought David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson back as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, this time investigating the disappearance of several women with the help of a convicted priest who claimed to be receiving psychic visions. It moved away from the aliens and government conspiracies most people associate with The X-Files and tried to tell a darker, standalone horror story instead.

I guess it just wasn’t allowed to get dark enough.

Carter says the goal was to make a real-world Frankenstein movie, but the theatrical version had to be changed and softened to secure a PG-13 rating. He described the original movie as a Frankenstein that never completely made it out of the operating room. Eighteen years later, he’s applying the electrodes again and restoring the scarier version he wanted audiences to see in the first place.

But does the audience he envisioned still care?

The new trailer definitely leans harder into the horror. There are medical experiments, severed body parts, missing women and enough disturbing imagery to make it feel less like a slightly spooky television reunion and more like the movie Carter claims he always intended to make. Whether the restored footage can completely transform the movie is another question.

Director’s cuts have saved movies before, but they can’t perform actual miracles. Ridley Scott sometimes needs two or three passes at it. Sometimes a studio really did butcher a filmmaker’s vision. Other times, the longer version just gives you more of the same movie that didn’t work the first time.

In this case, I honestly have no idea which one we’re getting because I can’t remember enough about the theatrical cut to even compare them.

That might actually make me the perfect test subject.

I’m not carrying around 18 years of anger over what Fox did to the movie, and I don’t have a beloved version of The X-Files that I need this new cut to live up to. All I know is that I saw I Want to Believe in a theater and it left no trace behind.

Zero, and I can remember 99% of every movie I’ve ever seen.

If Carter’s original version can make me remember it this time, that alone would be a hell of an improvement.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn begins streaming August 14 on Hulu.