R-rated director's cut of X-Files movie released

R-rated director's cut of X-Files film restores Chris Carter's original horror vision - Ars Technica

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There is a lot of excitement and some trepidation among The X-Files fans about Ryan Coogler’s reboot for Hulu, currently in production. While we’re waiting, Hulu just released Chris Carter’s revamped (and R-rated) director’s cut of the 2008 standalone spinoff film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, distinguishable from its predecessor with a slightly different title: The X-Files: I Want to Believe–Vrach Frankenshteyn.

(Minor spoilers below but no major reveals.)

I Want to Believe received mixed reviews at its release and didn’t exactly light up the box office, but it still grossed $68 million against its $30 million budget. By 2015, the project led to the return of The X-Files as a limited-run TV series, with the six-episode season 10 debuting in 2016. Mulder and Scully were reunited 14 years after the events of season 9 as the FBI reopened the X-Files under Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). The response was strong enough to warrant a follow-up ten-episode season in 2018, focusing on Mulder and Scully’s search for their missing son, William.

So one could hardly call I Want to Believe a failure. I quite enjoyed the film, but I always had a niggling sense that something was missing. That suspicion was confirmed when Carter made an appearance on David Duchovny’s podcast last summer and revealed that the studio had insisted he cut numerous scenes to get the desired PG-13 rating. Carter also hinted that a director’s cut was in the offing. “I made it too scary,” Carter told Duchovny of his original vision. “Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended.”

Originally slated for a June release on Disney+, I Want to Believe–Vrach Frankenshteyn eventually moved to Hulu with an August 14 release. It’s largely the same film as in 2008, just rejiggered to emphasize the stronger horror aspects that Carter originally envisioned. Per the official premise:

When a group of women is mysteriously abducted, it becomes a case right out of The X-Files. Years after walking away from the FBI, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are pulled back from the shadows when a federal agent vanishes without a trace. In a case you’d never see on TV, their only lead is a disgraced, defrocked priest claiming to have horrific psychic visions of the crime. Forced to confront the ghosts of their past, the partners must navigate a chilling winter landscape and an even darker human monstrosity. The truth of these crimes is out there somewhere… and it will take Mulder and Scully to find it.

Ars Technica caught up with Carter to learn more.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) reunite to solve a new X- file.