The last time we saw Fox Mulder and Dana Scully was back in 2002, huddled together and waiting for the end. The final alien invasion of Earth was scheduled for 2012, a decade ahead, and humankind was doomed.


Six years later, and all of our lives have moved on. But have – and, indeed, how could – theirs? Well, all thoughts of impending ET apocalypse seem to have vanished from both characters’ and film-makers’ minds, at least for now. Carter’s attempt to sidestep the convolutions of the series’ increasingly unwieldy and incoherent ‘mythology’ means that this belated visit to a franchise that ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own backstory is a standalone affair in the tradition of many of The X-Files’s best episodes; trouble is, this isn’t really one of them.


We begin with the reassuringly familiar device of ticker-tape typescript telling us where and when we are – in this case, a bitterly cold and snowbound West Virginia, all blizzards and drifts – and a typical pre-credits teaser that plays through two, perhaps related, events in violent counterpoint: an attack on a woman in her garage and a line of FBI agents spread out across the snows in search of… something.