(2008) "Don't give up" is the theme here when faced with evidentiary uncertainty and spiritual ambiguity. Before seeing this violent, at times creepy TV-like movie of the paranormal from director and creator of The X-Files television series, Chris Carter (co-screenwriter with Frank Spotnitz), I'd watched only one of the TV episodes; thus, I'm not a fan.

Having gone underground following his being put on trial for bogus charges, former FBI special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is sought for by FBI special agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), who thinks insights from his previous work with psychics may be worthwhile, when a former priest, employing what he says are visions of his mind's eye, provides clues to the whereabouts of a missing agent, Monica Bannan.

Mulder's erstwhile partner Dr Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a surgeon for a Catholic hospital, brings him back to assist with the case; but when she finds out that Fr Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) was defrocked and convicted of pedophilia (37 altar boys), she turns skeptical of the seer's claims, judging him a fraud with an intention to make others forget what kind of a sick individual he really is. Also convinced of Crissman's being a con-artist as well as of Mulder's lack of credibility, Agent Mosley Drummy (Alvin "Xzbit" Joiner) remarks on the priest's pronouncements as "pulling it out of his ass."

"I'm done chasing after monsters in the dark," Dana says to the man with whom she'd had a child. Fox tells her: "You could be right…. But what if you're wrong?" Unwilling to drop the case - "Let's just say I want to believe" - Mulder's impressed by Fr Joe's crying tears of blood while trying to "see" the victim at the crime scene.

"You cannot save her," Dana contends, referring to Mulder's dead sister, who had been abducted by aliens, by rescuing Bannan. Similarly, Scully can't recover her dead child by prolonging the life of her young patient, Christian Fearon, suffering from a rare brain disease, whose agonizing, untreatable condition Fr Ybarra, the hospital's director, insists must no longer be permitted. Stem cells offer a new, controversial, but dangerously painful possible hope. When Dana says to Fox that she's losing sleep over this ordeal, he replies: "And do you think God is losing any sleep?"

A new victim goes missing and eleven amputations of limbs (each with traces of acepromazine, an animal tranquilizer) are discovered buried in the snow near Somerset, WVa. A group of Russians is harvesting organs and experimenting with a Frankenstein-like effort to save one of their own.

Realizing that her refusal to give up on Christian is no different than Mulder's inability to choose not to pursue the crime through Fr Joe's inner sensitivity ("This is God's work"), Scully re-engages herself even though disturbing evidence suggests an intimate connection between Crissman and the Russians.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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