The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn (2026) Review!!

Synopsis – Mulder and Scully are called back to duty by the FBI when a former priest claims to be receiving psychic visions pertaining to a kidnapped agent.

My Take – Released in the crowded summer of 2008, a season dominated by The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Wall‑E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Tropic Thunder, Mamma Mia! and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the second X‑Files feature arrived seven years after the landmark series had ended. Expectations were high: creator‑director Chris Carter hoped to reignite the franchise, and the film followed the well‑received 1998 outing Fight the Future.

Instead, his film landed with a thud. Fans and critics admired the chemistry between Mulder and Scully but dismissed the plot as limp and uninspired. For many (including myself), it felt less like a cinematic event than a middling mid-season episode that had wandered into theaters.

Now, eighteen years later, director Carter has revisited the project amid the trend of director’s and extended cuts salvaging genre films. His new version restores deleted scenes, ramps up gore, and leans into horror—his intended vision of a Frankenstein‑tinged procedural, with Mulder and Scully aided by a psychic priest in tracking a serial killer. Rechristened Vrach Frankenshteyn, the cut doesn’t reinvent the story but reasserts its horror DNA. And the the result is undeniably stronger, yet the same flaws remain.

Surprisingly, clocking in ten minutes shorter than the theatrical release, the film still suffers from underwritten characters, implausible plotting, and a lack of dramatic urgency. The villains remain too thinly sketched to leave an impression, and the heightened body horror only makes the weaknesses more unpleasant to watch. Ultimately, it proving again that this was always a decent procedural episode masquerading as something grander.

The story once again follows retired FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Mulder, living in seclusion after his trial for crimes against the Bureau, remains a fugitive figure, while Scully has rebuilt her life as a physician at a Catholic hospital. Their paths converge when FBI agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Mosley Drummy (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) enlist Mulder’s expertise with psychic phenomena to aid in the search for a missing agent.

The investigation hinges on the disturbing testimony of Father Joe Crissman (Billy Connolly), a defrocked priest and convicted pedophile who claims to experience visions of the abducted agent and other women disappearing in rural West Virginia. Reluctantly, Mulder and Scully are drawn back into the shadows, navigating a case that blurs the line between faith, science, and horror.

The new cut alters nothing in terms of plot or structure. Written by Chris Carter and longtime producing partner Frank Spotnitz, the screenplay deliberately blurs the line between science and spirituality. Scully’s struggle to save a terminally ill patient mirrors Mulder’s willingness to trust Father Joe’s visions, framing belief itself as the central mystery. This isn’t a tale of extraterrestrials or government conspiracies—it’s a meditation on faith: faith in medicine, faith in religion, and faith in each other.

The restored footage allows those themes more space to breathe without bloating the runtime. The reinstated Russian medical subplot lands with greater weight, making the subtitle feel earned rather than ornamental.

Yet the problem isn’t simply the plot’s implausibility—after all, this is The X‑Files. It’s the film’s disinterest in its villains. Dacyshyn murders women to preserve the man he loves, while Tomczeszyn survives by grafting his head onto abducted bodies. These are the kinds of grotesque circumstances around which entire gothic novels could be built, but the film barely engages with them.

Instead, it plays like an unambitious spinoff, content to present Mulder and Scully with another case. Viewed today, the film benefits from the perspective of the revival seasons. It’s not great, but for those who simply want ninety minutes of Mulder and Scully sparring under Mark Snow’s haunting score, it suffices.

Even when the monsters are terrestrial and the plot feels borrowed from routine thrillers, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s chemistry remains magnetic, the clash of Mulder’s lofty theories and Scully’s grounded rationality is still endlessly watchable. The new cut doesn’t change that equation, for better or worse. Bill Connolly deserves special mention. His Father Joe is both despicable and strangely human, a performance that finds warmth amid revulsion.

Amanda Peet and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner make the most of their limited material, while Callum Keith Rennie injects his familiar menace into the mystery. On the whole, ‘The X‑Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn’ is a modest revision, an excuse to revisit a flawed sequel with gentler eyes, even if it never achieves the intended impact.