The X-Files: I Want to Believe

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a 2008 supernatural thriller film. Directed by , and written by Carter and , it is the second feature film installment of the franchise.
Unlike the first film - - I Want to Believe is unconnected to the arc, instead acting as an independent thriller horror story.
==Synopsis==
 and have been out of the FBI for several years — with Mulder living in isolation as a fugitive from the organization and Scully having become a doctor at a Catholic-run hospital, where she has formed a friendly relationship with a seriously ill boy patient — but, when an FBI agent is mysteriously kidnapped and a former priest who has been convicted of being a pedophile claims to be experiencing psychic visions of the endangered agent, Mulder and Scully reluctantly accept the FBI's request for their particular paranormal expertise on the case.
==Summary==
===Part One===
SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA
10:23 P.M.
At night, Monica Bannan drives to her home in snowy Somerset, West Virginia only to be confronted by two men — one of whom she attacks with a spiked garden hoe before the other man captures her after a brief chase. Several hours later, Joseph Crissman leads an FBI task force, searching for the missing agent while supervised by ASAC Dakota Whitney and Drummy, to a severed man's arm, buried in the snow, that bears wound marks matching injuries Agent Bannan inflicted on the kidnapper she attacked.
OUR LADY OF SORROWS HOSPITAL
8:25 A.M.
In a conference room at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Doctor , surrounded and watched by other members of the Catholic hospital's staff, discusses Christian Fearon, a boy patient at the hospital, during a televised conference with an On Screen Doctor. After Dr. Scully mentions her fear that the extremely ill Christian has , her medical consultant reminds her that there is no treatment for that brain disease and she sadly looks to Father Ybarra, a priest at the hospital who has entered during the conference. Scully later notices Christian being wheeled out of his ward in a wheelchair by his mother and father, and approaches them, making friendly small talk with the boy and notifying his parents that the medical staff intend to do some more tests on him. Special Agent Drummy arrives and tells Scully that he, on behalf of the FBI, is urgently looking for , Scully's former FBI partner. Even though she claims that she no longer works with Mulder, Agent Drummy requests that she contact him, as her doing so might help save the life of another agent, indirectly referring to Agent Bannan.
A short time later, Scully drives home to a small, secluded house where she and Mulder live. She enters an office decorated with many newspaper clippings related to the paranormal, where Mulder spends much of his time in isolation and is alone here now, busy cutting another article out of a newspaper. As he does not turn to face her when she enters, Scully opines that he has become incredibly trusting, for a man wanted by the FBI, but Mulder jokingly claims he literally has eyes on the back of his head, and recites science pertaining to such a phenomenon. When Scully tells him that the FBI are requesting his assistance, Mulder is initially very reluctant to help the organization, recalling that they put him on trial for bogus charges and attempted to discredit a decade of his work, but — after Scully exits the room, leaving him to ruminate on a photograph of his sister — he agrees to accept their request, on one condition. Shortly thereafter, he and Scully leave their residence via a black helicopter.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
9:24 P.M.
At night, the helicopter comes to land on the roof of the FBI's Headquarters in Washington, D.C., where former Mulder and Scully meet with Agent Drummy. Mulder thanks him for sending the helicopter but Drummy admits that the credit for doing so is not his to take and, shortly thereafter, leads Mulder and Scully through a corridor in the FBI building, where agents stare at the duo as they pass. After Drummy leaves the pair waiting outside a conference room, they glance at a framed photograph of George W. Bush and another of J. Edgar Hoover. Drummy soon returns, however, and leads the former agents into the bustling conference room, where ASAC Whitney greets them, mentioning that she is aware of Mulder's previous work on the X-Files, and briefs them on the case. They learn that Joseph Crissman is a former priest who contacted the FBI with a claim that he was experiencing a psychic vision of Agent Bannan before he led the search to the severed limb and, after Mulder makes a use of language that he innocently intends to be humorous but becomes embarrassingly discomforting, he and Scully discover that Father Joe is a convicted pedophile.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
1:01 A.M.
Two FBI cars enter and park in a snowy area of Richmond, Virginia where Mulder, Scully, Whitney and Drummy exit one of the vehicles and prepare to enter a series of tall buildings nearby, while FBI agents from the other car remain outside the automobiles. While Agent Drummy leads the way, ASAC Whitney describes the buildings to Mulder and Scully as dorms for habitual sex offenders who police themselves, including Father Joe, who lives here voluntarily with a roommate. Mulder makes another joke, as they near the dorms, and Joe's roommate permits them access. Once they enter, Scully and her companions see that Father Joe is finishing his prayers in an adjacent room. When Mulder questions him about his visions, Joe reveals that, in his "mind's eye", he sees the female victim being assaulted and putting up a fight, hears the noise of dogs barking and has the feeling that the victim is still alive. Scully makes it clear, during this questioning, that she detests Father Joe, doubting both the validity of his prayers and his claims of paranormal ability, before rushing outside in frustration. Mulder approaches her as she leans over a balcony outside, startling her, and they discuss Father Joe, with Scully apologizing for her conduct — even though Mulder praises her actions — and further explaining her doubts. Mulder reveals that he is about to accompany Whitney, Drummy and Father Joe on a journey to determine the former priest's psychic capabilities, but — rather than join them, as Mulder suggests — Scully instead leaves.
SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA
5:02 A.M.
As the four participants of the investigation travel in their FBI car, Mulder further reveals his identity to Father Joe, who learns of Mulder's previous assignment on the X-Files and the abduction of his sister by , a long time ago, and realizes that she is now dead. The team visits a house similar to Agent Bannan's but, despite Joe originally claiming that the missing agent was taken and attacked there, he later apparently senses it is not the same building involved in the crime and crosses the short distance to the actual building. As Agent Drummy follows Father Joe away to inspect the surrounding area, ASAC Whitney explains to Mulder her skepticism regarding the supposed psychic and tells Mulder that her decision to include him in their search effort was unpopular at the FBI, but that she needs the insights he gained by investigating other psychics, work that — according to Whitney — impressed her. Moments later, Father Joe falls to his knees in the snow and apparently has a psychic vision of Agent Bannan's abduction, but the demonstration is met with skepticism from Agent Drummy and culminates in the former priest crying tears of blood.
Meanwhile, in Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Scully speaks with Christian in his ward but his eagerness to leave causes her to realize he has been scared by the sight of Father Ybarra, who stands in a corridor outside. Advising the boy not to be afraid, Scully vacates the room to meet with Father Ybarra and passionately discusses Christian with him, arguing that the boy's test results are not in his purview. He refutes this and, even after he hands her a set of the test results upon her request for them, he states that there are better facilities available for Christian, as the hospital will not be able to heal the boy. When a nearby accidental clatter distracts Father Ybarra, Scully hurries away from him. She enters her office and sits at her desk where she opens the folder of test results and starts to cry but, noticing a colleague looking across at her, she composes herself, taking another file and a packet of tissues from her desk drawers as her colleague retreats from the room. Scully is left alone, staring sorrowfully down at the files in front of her.
In MacLaren Natatorium, the man who chased and caught Agent Bannan stalks a swimmer, Cheryl Cunningham, watching her from the hidden depths of the water. The woman later exits the building and, as she walks to her car, the engine of a nearby snowplow roars, making her jump, but the vehicle soon drives away. While later driving along an icy side road, she encounters the snowplow again and tries to overtake it but the truck, driven by her stalker from the pool, pushes her car off the road, causing her to crash, relatively unharmed, into a hay bale in a snow-covered field. The man stops and reverses his snowplow on the road, then walks over to her car where, even though she is at first under the false impression that he has come to her rescue, he breaks her window, while she is struggling to unbuckle her seatbelt, before causing her to lose consciousness and continuing to abduct her.
===Part Two===
In their home, Mulder and Scully are lying together in bed but Scully is having difficulty sleeping so she talks to Mulder about the issue troubling her, telling him about Christian and the boy's predicament for the first time. She questions God, regarding the boy, and wonders whether a strong connection she feels to Christian is due to the loss of their son, William, but Mulder dismisses this possibility. After he persuades her to go to sleep, the couple kiss but Scully humorously complains he has a scratchy beard and, before she begins to completely relax, she remembers to tell him about her discovery that, weirdly, traces of an animal tranquilizer had been discovered in the tissue of the severed arm, news that now keeps Mulder awake. Within moments, he is on his feet and moves to the bathroom, followed there by Scully. He prepares to shave himself while pondering the evidence, recalling that Father Joe mentioned he heard the noise of dogs barking and cried tears of blood. Even though it is late at night, Scully answers a call from ASAC Whitney, who is a passenger in a car with Father Joe and Agent Drummy driving, and tells Scully that the FBI group are following a new lead provided to them by the former priest.
THREE HOURS LATER
After Scully and a clean shaven Mulder drive to the same snowy, rural area where the FBI previously found the severed arm and are searching again, Whitney approaches the pair and explains that Father Joe led the search effort back to this location. Doubting Father Joe's repetitive descriptions of his own supposed visions, Drummy convinces ASAC Whitney to allow him permission to dismiss the tired searchers. Mulder turns to Father Joe, who claims he now sees the face of an anonymous person whose eyes stare out of a surface like through dirty glass. When Father Joe starts to pensively walk away, heading for a nearby tree line, Mulder asks Scully what Joe's description means, but she ignores the question, instead accusing Mulder of still, after years, looking for his sister and urging him to finally accept that his sister is beyond saving. In an attempt to ignore her, Mulder calls the departing FBI team back and they trudge after Father Joe, following him towards the tree line and then to a clearing in the forest, where he and Mulder begin to dig.
While the manual excavation continues, resulting in the discovery of a block of solid ice that is buried in the snow and contains at least one body of a deceased woman staring out of the dirty glass of the ice, the team are unaware that one of the abductors, the snowplow driver, is in the vicinity as he maneuvers his truck along a forest track, stops the vehicle — knocking over a sign that reads "no hunting" — and takes a bag that drips blood from the back of the truck before he walks, hauling the bag, to the edge of a cliff, overlooking the team. He seems concerned, as he gazes down at the search effort, but moves away again. As the FBI team disperses below the cliff and agents hurry to find equipment that will enable them to exhume the block of ice, Scully watches in concern as Mulder walks out of the clearing but she whirls in alarm to face Father Joe, who is standing behind her and tells her not to give up.
The snowplow driver steers his truck to a metal gate surrounding a complex where dogs are kept in cages and Cheryl Cunningham has been secured in a wooden box with virtually nothing more than a small slit, out of which she peers. She screams with desperate appeals for release and, when two Russian men dressed in white surgical garb crouch down next to her box, she urges them to help her but they soon move out of sight. Her kennel is transported through the complex, while she demands to know where she is and sees the snowplow driver talking to two other people dressed in surgical attire. Her cage halts near the man who was attacked by Agent Bannan and who is now lying on an operating table, under a green surgical shroud, still bearing the facial wounds from his assault, as tears of blood fill his eyes and trickle down the sides of his face.
8:08 A.M.
In the conference room at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Father Ybarra finishes informing staff and doctors on the hospital's decision to relocate Christian to a hospice, as Scully enters. She disputes this arrangement but eventually relents and quietly takes a seat as Father Ybarra begins to turn his attention to the discussion of other matters although, moments later, Scully speaks up to present the controversial option of treating Christian's condition with a form of stem cell therapy, which she insists is not the choice of hospital administration to make but her own. As she withdraws from the room, Father Ybarra recommends that she consult "the highest authority" on the matter, claiming he already has done so.
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
10:20 A.M.
As Mulder tries to call Scully from an FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, he looks at a photograph of Agent Bannan where he notices that she is wearing a medical I.D. bracelet and Scully researches stem cell therapy at the hospital, using Google as a resource. Mulder records a message on her answering machine, informing her, while scientists constantly work on the ice block behind him, that eleven cleanly amputated human limbs, taken from victims, and more traces of the animal tranquilizer have been found in the ice. After Whitney arrives just as he ends the call, Mulder excitedly claims he has a hunch that they are close to solving a dozen murders but Whitney indicates that her priority is finding Agent Bannan. Later, surrounded by curious FBI agents in a conference room within the same facility, Father Joe attests to having a vision of Cheryl Cunningham and, inspired by his account, Mulder asks Whitney to make preparations for them to investigate the recent kidnapping.
SOMERSET, WEST VIRGINIA
2:08 P.M.
Mulder, Whitney, Drummy and Father Joe arrive at the crash site, where they learn more about Cheryl Cunningham's disappearance. Drummy suspects that she merely crashed her car, escaped the vehicle by knocking out its window and fell asleep on the snowy ground while taking a shortcut but Mulder disagrees, basing his opinion on the angle of the crash. Despite the fact that Father Joe is unable to psychically sense anything at the scene, Mulder comes across another medical I.D. bracelet, lying on the snow-covered ground, and, on his suggestion, the searchers force open the car's locked trunk to uncover another clue — a bathing suit that is frozen stiff but still smells of chlorine.
This finding leads the team to McLaren Natatorium, where questioning an elderly male receptionist, who is slow on the uptake, proves unfruitful, at least initially.
As Christian is being wheeled into an operating theater before his treatment of stem cell therapy begins, he talks with Scully, commenting that she now looks scared. Preparing with the rest of her team, Scully watches Christian from an adjacent room, looking through a window at him and, once he is unconscious, she is instrumental in his operation, inserting stem cells into his brain.
Shortly after this procedure, Scully is writing medical notes in a shower room when Mulder arrives. Although she feels a need not to be disturbed from her work, they discuss Christian at length, one day after the night when Scully first told Mulder about the boy, and she explains that the hospital's medical staff won't know whether his treatment is working, until a series of the procedures are completed. When she realizes that Mulder has come to the hospital to talk about something else, he apprises her of the most recent disappearance, revealing several facts that he and the FBI investigators have learned, such as their discovery that both Agent Bannan and Cheryl Cunningham swam at the same pool, that both had medical I.D. bracelets and that both had a rare blood type.
Scully immediately deduces, from this information, that the two victims were targeted for their organs, and she advises him on how to proceed with the case but, when he implores her to stay involved with it, she refuses, explaining that they have both moved on in their lives and that she is not willing to allow "the darkness" into her home. Even though Mulder insists it is in his nature, Scully sympathetically encourages him to write down his experiences in a book and, although he initially assumes that she is asking him to give up, she declines to do so but sadly declares that she will not be coming home. Mulder urges her to reconsider but she admits that she is at a loss for another course of action and the couple part, each wishing the other good luck.
Scully later meanders down the hospital's main stairs and encounters Christian's parents at the bottom, who announce that they have decided to end their son's stem cell therapy and instead put their faith solely in God, notifying her that they have spoken with Father Ybarra but have come to their new decision without his influence. Clearly holding back tears, Scully considers aloud what might happen if the treatment was successful and admits that she does not want to give up.
MANNERS-COLONIAL HOSPITAL
5:01 P.M.
The snowplow driver obtains a liver from an operating theater at Manners-Colonial Hospital, putting the organ in a blue ice chest — specifically designed to be used for organ transportation — as a female anesthesiologist reminisces to her colleagues, while they are carrying out an operation in the room, about a death-defying experience she had with someone she was in love with, defining the incident as having been romantic. Just before he has a chance to leave the hospital, the snowplow driver is detained by Robert Koell, from the District Attorney's office in Richmond, and a police officer. When Koell interrogates the man, he testifies, with a Russian accent, that his job requires him to speedily transport the liver to Willow's Memorial Hospital. Ignoring a question about whether his employer would say that his work has ever not been legitimate, the abductor claims that his employer is sick with cancer.
Unaccompanied, Scully revisits Father Joe — who is also currently alone, in his home in Richmond — and he invites her inside. She is curious as to why he earlier instructed her not to give up but he claims that he has no idea and doesn't know much about her, apart from the fact that her beliefs differ from Mulder's, who Joe mistakes as her husband. He and Scully argue and, on her way out, he quotes scripture to her, which further angers her and she returns to him, demanding to know why he told her not to give up. He again answers that he does not know, shouting his reply at her this time, and says that all he ever wanted was to serve God. A seizure then takes its hold on him and — soon after Scully bitterly directs him to discontinue his deceitful act, genuinely believing it is that — she sees that his convulsions are real.
In the abductors' compound, one of the Russian men who earlier knelt down by Cheryl Cunningham's box does so again, offering her food and unlocking her wooden kennel. He is distracted by the sudden and extreme shaking of Agent Bannan's body nearby, however, and rushes away. With her box now unsecured, Cheryl escapes from it and scrambles past the dog cages before clambering down a metal chute, all the way to the end. Dragging her lower body behind her, she bursts through a dirty plastic curtain into the wintry air outside, where a two-headed guard dog charges at her, barking first and then ferociously growling.
===Part Three===
A group involving Mulder, Whitney, Drummy and at least one other FBI agent arrives in cars outside the dorms for sex offenders, where they find Scully, amid a bustling scene of emergency, ensuring that Father Joe is taken away by a medical team. Whitney relays news to her that they now have a suspect — the snowplow driver, whose real name is Janke Dacyshyn. Whitney also reveals to Scully that he was questioned by the Richmond D.A. but was released, due to a lack of evidence, and that the FBI have located a fairly credible witness who is alleging that the man swam with the two currently missing women, at the same pool as them. While Mulder and Scully quarrel about how this relates to Father Joe, Drummy steps forward with new information recently determined by the FBI; specifically, that Franz Tomczeszyn — their suspect's employer and husband, and the same man who helped kidnap Agent Bannan but now bears wounds from her assault on him — was one of thirty-seven altar boys that Father Joe molested. The cars begin to leave without Mulder, as Scully attempts to persuade him to let them go, but he draws the attention of the FBI unit before they leave and rejoins them, much to her dismay.
The group travels to their suspects' downtown offices, into which Drummy leads an armed FBI detachment, as Whitney pulls Mulder to the side and begins to thank him in genuine appreciation but also relates that the investigative situation has changed. Agent Drummy and his armed escorts find that the offices are empty and they are unaware of Dacyshyn's presence when he visits the building. Dacyshyn quickly leaves but, when he steps outside, Mulder notices the suspect and, followed by Whitney, chases after him, causing Dacyshyn to drop a red ice chest outside the office complex. Mulder and Whitney follow the fugitive across a busy road, dodging traffic, and into a construction site, while Drummy and his fortified unit continue to search the offices. The pursuing duo ascend the uncompleted structure they have entered and race to capture Dacyshyn but — while Drummy and some of his men find the ice chest and are disgusted to discover that it contains Agent Bannan's severed head — Whitney is pushed by Dacyshyn from a high floor, plummeting down a long vertical shaft and landing on hard, concrete ground, where her body goes limp.
Scully then meets Mulder at the bottom of the stairs she walked down earlier. As they hold hands, he disappointedly informs her that both Agent Bannan and ASAC Whitney are dead. After he lets Scully know that he wishes to speak with Father Joe, she offers to talk with him instead and professes that the former priest is ill with terminal cancer. In his hospital bed, Joe claims to both Scully and Mulder that he has had a vision of a man speaking a foreign language and, when Scully then shows him a picture of Dacyshyn, the former priest is seemingly surprised that the image is of the man he was speaking about. Scully tells Joe about Dacyshyn's suspected crimes and presents an image of his accomplice, Tomczeszyn, to the former priest. Despite the fact that he fails to recognize Tomczeszyn at first, Joe is shocked and saddened when he realizes his connection to the criminal, believing it to be proof that God caused his visions. Scully asks him whether Agent Bannan is still alive and he answers that he can feel she is. Moments later, outside Joe's ward, Mulder announces that he is about to start looking for Cheryl Cunningham alone, as everyone else has given up hope in the possibility that she is still alive. Following close behind him, Scully admits that his stubbornness is why she fell in love with him. To Mulder, however, it represents the reason they cannot be together, which he tells her, moments before they depart.
In the abductors' compound, Dacyshyn shouts, in Russian, at the scientist who opened Cheryl's cage earlier while Tomczeszyn lies on a gurney, his head joined to Agent Bannan's lower body.
Mulder, meanwhile, has returned to the area where he helped uncover the block of ice and now comes across the cliff used earlier, by Dacyshyn, as a vantage point. In Scully's car, Mulder drives to a small animal supply store named Nutter's Feed & Animal Supply but, finding that the store is closing, he persuades the busy owner to permit him access and then determines that the store sells the specific animal tranquilizer that was found in the tissue of the severed arm and in the ice block. The owner is distracted by a telephone call and, upon refocusing his attention on his store's interior, he finds that Dacyshyn has entered while Mulder has crept away. After the abductor leaves the store, Mulder tries to sneak after him in Scully's car but concentrates on attempting to call her and rounds a corner to find that the plow truck has come to a stop, straight ahead. The car Mulder is in bounces off the back of the other vehicle before skidding to a stop. The snowplow then rams Scully's car and pushes it off the road, causing it to roll down a steep, snowy embankment.
At Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Scully walks through a corridor and unlocks her office door. She is sorting through some files when she happens upon detailed information and images pertaining to transplant experiments, being done in Russia, on dogs. She makes an unanswered call to Mulder, ignorant of his crash, and leaves a message for him about her discovery, suspecting that the abducted women have been the victims of similar experiments and coming to the significant conclusion that Agent Bannan is indeed still alive, as Father Joe prophesied.
The car Mulder was driving lies overturned in the snow, but he manages to dig himself out of the wreck and gets to his feet, unsteadily. He peers up at a steep, rocky overhang, towering over the crash site.
At FBI Headquarters, Special Agent in Charge Fossa answers a call from Scully but transfers it to the nearby Agent Drummy, who apologetically refuses to comply with Scully's request for assistance in her search for Mulder. In considerable irritation, she instructs him to obtain someone who will help.
Meanwhile, Cheryl Cunningham is removed from her box, as she struggles, and is drugged. In the cold night outside, the snowplow breaks down and, abandoned by Dacyshyn, the vehicle is later found by Mulder, who takes a wrench from inside the truck and slips it under his jacket before dashing away. Inside the abductor's compound, the scientists begin an attempt to transplant Tomczeszyn's head from Monica Bannan's lower body to that of Cheryl Cunningham, as Dacyshyn whispers caring assurances to his injured accomplice. Mulder simultaneously finds the compound and climbs over its perimeter fence but encounters the two-headed guard dog, which knocks him to the ground. Drawn to the noise of the dog's aggressive barks and snarls, Dacyshyn rushes outside to find the animal — yelping helplessly, lying on the ground, where it bleeds — and a trail of bloodied footprints through the snow.
Scully's car is being hauled to the top of the cliff when she arrives there in a black FBI car and is approached by a uniformed female sheriff. After Scully hurriedly introduces herself, the sheriff recalls that she was called by an FBI dignitary from Washington. Scully agrees with the sheriff's recollection, pointing out the man she spoke to, , who stands nearby and looks down the cliff. The sheriff hands Mulder's phone, the only evidence of what has taken place to have been found in the area, to Scully and then politely moves aside. Scully's worry for Mulder increases when she sees blood on his phone, but Skinner assures her that Mulder must be okay and probably climbed up the cliff.
Dacyshyn follows the footprints to the facility and searches the area, walking past the opening of the chute where Cheryl tried to escape and where Mulder now hides. Further inside the facility, the scientists remove Tomczeszyn's head from his temporary body as Mulder emerges from the chute. He orders the surgeons to stop what they are doing but they begin to shout at him in Russian so, threatening them with the wrench from Dacyshyn's snowplow, he demands that they back off. Although Mulder realizes that none of the surgeons in the room speak English, he directs them to undo their work — to take Cheryl out of an ice bath in which she is immersed, remove tubes that are pumping blood out of her neck and sew up small cuts in the same area of her body. While the Russian scientist continues to squabble at Mulder in the surgeon's own language, Mulder uncovers Monica Bannan's naked lower body and is shocked to see the eyes of Tomczeszyn's severed head open, while the head lies in an ice bucket. Mulder's alarm at this sight distracts him away from the Russian scientist, who shoots tranquilizer into his neck with a gas hypodermic. Dacyshyn enters, drags Mulder to his feet and speaks to the intruder in Russian before punching him, knocking Mulder to the ground.
As Skinner drives Scully in their FBI car, he encourages her to have faith that they will find Mulder, stating that he knows the onetime FBI agent and claiming that he wouldn't do anything crazy.
Dacyshyn hauls first the headless corpse of Monica Bannan and then Mulder's dazed body outside and into a woodshed, where an ax is embedded in a chopping block.
Near the compound, Scully and Skinner pass an area where a thought occurs to Scully. On her recommendation, Skinner reverses the car to a row of mailboxes by the roadside where Scully is led, remembering the passage of scripture that Father Joe quoted to her earlier, to one particular mailbox.
In the woodshed, Dacyshyn lifts the headless remains of Agent Bannan onto the chopping block and, from his position on the ground, Mulder groggily looks over to see that an arm of the deceased body still bears Bannan's medical I.D. bracelet. Dacyshyn swings the ax as Scully opens the mailbox. Still led by Father Joe's biblical quote, she looks through the mail inside and finds a letter addressed to Dr. Uroff-Koltoff. She and Skinner are uncertain of any further significance the letter may have or how to proceed until, moments later, she discerns the barking of nearby dogs. Scully races off towards the direction of the noise.
While Dacyshyn stuffs chopped body parts into a sack, Mulder, still woozy on the ground, watches this and then feebly struggles to reach the ax. Dacyshyn grabs it out of his loose grip and prepares to use it on Mulder but, as he readies the ax in the air, the criminal is rendered unconscious by Scully when she suddenly appears behind him and strikes him once with a piece of wood. She checks that Mulder is conscious and he apologizes for wrecking her car before warning that Cheryl Cunningham is still inside the surgical facility. A surgeon is beginning to cut deeply into the remaining victim's neck when Skinner enters. Armed, he forces the resistant surgeons to stop their procedure and is appalled by their unscrupulous deeds. Scully enters, eager for Mulder to receive warm clothes and fluids, but, when Skinner indicates the ice bath, she realizes that her medical expertise is greatly required inside the facility. Skinner herds the surgeons into the same kennel where they confined Cheryl, as Scully takes off her coat and begins preparing to conduct her needed work on the currently bleeding victim. Skinner heads outside, taking off his own coat to wrap around Mulder, and tends to his frostbitten friend, who is surprised to see him.
In daylight, Scully's car is parked outside the countryside house where she and Mulder live. Mulder, now sitting in his cluttered office with minor visible wounds, is cutting yet another article out of a newspaper, this time concerning the recent case he became involved with and headlined, "FBI arrests modern-day Frankenstein doctor". An image below the headline shows Agent Drummy apprehending the Russian surgeon. After Scully enters the office with news that Father Joe is dead, Mulder complains that the FBI are claiming Father Joe was an accomplice and are completely concealing his psychic connection to Tomczeszyn. When Scully states that they will never know the truth, Mulder cites the fact that both men suffered from lung cancer as further proof of their psychic link. He also suspects that Father Joe died at the same time that Scully pulled the tubes from Cheryl's neck and cut off the blood supply to Tomczeszyn's severed head. However, Scully is of the opinion that no-one at the FBI will care whether the connection can be proved. She professes to have believed that Father Joe was a conduit for God and to have acted on Joe's advice not to give up, contributing it to Mulder's successful rescue but also to hardships Christian has faced due to the stem cell therapy she has insisted upon. Mulder considers the possibility that Father Joe was forgiven because he didn't give up but Scully challenges him to prove that theory. Due at the hospital to supervise another of Christian's surgeries, Scully exits her house.
Mulder follows her outside, wondering why Father Joe had told her not to give up, concluding that his advice might be "the larger answer". When Scully asks him not to make her already difficult task any harder, he holds her and tells her that, if she has any doubts at all, she should cancel the surgery and they will leave together, heading as far from the darkness as they can. Even though they agree that the darkness will follow them, Mulder courageously implies that they will overcome it. They kiss, long and lovingly, before she climbs into her car.
Later, at the hospital where she is employed, Scully paces down a corridor, passing a colleague who spoke out against her when she first suggested using stem cell therapy. At the end of the corridor, Father Ybarra stands, speaking to Christian's parents. All three gape at Scully as she rounds a corner, moving past them, and scales a flight of stairs. In the operating room, final preparations are made for Christian to undergo another of the procedures. When a colleague asks Scully if she is ready to begin the surgery, she looks around at the faces of her waiting staff and at three nuns who appear in the window of a doorway to the room. She replies positively to her colleague's query and confidently smiles down at Christian.
===Coda===
The shadow of a helicopter glides across the surface of a deep blue ocean. The greenery of a heavily forested landmass, marked with the occasional clearing, flourishes in the sunlight and, far from its corralled beach, a small boat is oared by Mulder, wearing only red swimming trunks, while Scully also sits in the boat, sunbathing opposite him, in a black bikini with a white open wrap. Heading towards a small, sun-drenched desert island in the distance, they momentarily wave to the sky above them before continuing on their journey.
==References==
2502 Bellflower Road; ASAC; ; ; George W. Bush; Howard Dimsdale; District Attorney; dog; Father; J. Edgar Hoover; Samantha Mulder; Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital; Quantico; Richmond; Gerald Schnauz; Somerset, West Virginia; Special Agent in Charge; Virginia; Washington, D.C.; William
==Background Information==
===Development===
 creator, executive producer and writer was originally approached by executives in 2001 (during the television series' ) in regards to a second film based on The X-Files. He agreed to the studio's offer and determined that , a fellow executive producer and writer from the series, approved of an idea that had occurred to him. Since work on the television series was simultaneously progressing and busying them, however, Carter and Spotnitz did not immediately start work on the concept but, about six months to a year following the series' cancellation in 2002, they began talking about the idea, fleshing it out together and formulating what Carter would term "a whole story", using cards to board the plot. When they talked about the story in 2003, the writers did not yet imagine the scene that features Mulder and Scully in bed together.
Contract negotiations and a lawsuit concerning the television series then delayed further development of the film's story and about six years went by, after which Carter and Spotnitz reunited in the spring of 2007 and returned to the same story and idea. Chris Carter would later come to the belief that their need to step away from the project before coming back, fresh, gained them a perspective of their success that he had only experienced on the television series after taking time away from its hectic production.
However, he and Spotnitz had lost the cards they had been using. This situation, coupled with the hard work that they had invested in the project, initially frustrated Chris Carter, but he would ultimately come to the conclusion that the incident was the best thing that could have happened to them. He and Spotnitz also found that they and their perceptions of Mulder and Scully had changed in the intervening years anyway, and the writers now felt that the emotional story for the characters had to reflect the passage of time.
Frank Spotnitz was extremely excited by and interested in conceiving where Mulder and Scully would be in their lives, what the state of their relationship would be, and what the movie would be about. He was surprised by how quickly he connected with the characters and the world of The X-Files, finding — because, he thought, he had spent so many years of his professional life thinking about the characters, who they were and what mattered to them — that, when he sat down with Chris Carter to revisit them, they were still present in his subconscious mind, alive in his imagination, and he had actually missed them. He very quickly had extremely strong feelings about where they would be in their lives and what would now matter to them.
Both Spotnitz and Carter did not find it difficult to return their mindset to The X-Files because they had been living with it for quite a while, having worked on the script, and their imaginations were firmly back in that world. Chris Carter found it easy to write for Mulder and Scully, and to hear their voices again. He would later recall, at the 2008 New York Comic Con, that writing the characters' names, which he had not written for at least six years previously, had been like the most natural keyboard stroke imaginable.
Mulder actor was, according to Chris Carter, probably as responsible as anyone for getting the movie made. Duchovny wanted to do it, campaigned for it and was enthusiastic about it. The most important demand for him was that the film would be a standalone, episodic type of movie that wasn't part of The X-Files mythology and could be understood by people who had never seen any episodes of the series. This was something that Duchovny and Carter had talked about, through the years since they had first planned on doing another movie.
One of the first things that Carter pitched to the studio about what the movie would include was Mulder and Scully being in bed together. When the scene was originally written, though, Mulder did not have a beard, so Scully's complaint about him having a scratchy beard was not realized until a later draft of the script.
Many versions of the scene where Scully first arrives at her home and Mulder is sitting with his back to her were written, as Carter experienced difficulty in moving past this particular scene and was irritated that he kept making Mulder's dialogue funny, as per the character's usual behavior, but beside the point and inconsequential.
Carter started to create the character of Joseph Crissman after a friend told him about having recently met Billy Connolly, walking along a street in Mexico in the middle of the night, when Connolly had been on a fishing trip. Carter came to the opinion that the first scene of the film in which the character appears was one that was written without much thought about the practicalities of putting it into action.
Writing partners Carter and Spotnitz, having worked together for the past thirteen years, had a lot of arguments during the film's creation. These arguments were about the movie, what it would mean, and what they wanted to say, because, while the movie would have a strong religious theme running through it and feature Scully's Catholicism, Carter was a person of faith and Spotnitz was not. Similarly, Spotnitz did not want to make a movie that he disagreed with or thought was religious claptrap. Ultimately, both writers helped craft a movie that they both agreed with and they both believed what the film said. Spotnitz discovered that the process of reaching this outcome, as a writer, was exciting. (The X-Files: I Want to Believe DVD/The X-Files: I Want to Believe Blu-Ray)
===Locations===
The decision to film the movie in Vancouver, where the first five years of The X-Files television series had been made before the series had moved to Los Angeles, was an early one and seemed right to Chris Carter and David Duchovny. According to Duchovny:
:"It all makes sense. You know, when Chris and I first talked about doing this movie, we kind of unconsciously both said, 'You know, I guess it should be in Vancouver, it really should be,' and it just felt like - you know, almost superstitiously – like the right thing to do."
Filming in Vancouver also facilitated the return of many crew members who had previously worked on The X-Files, and individuals who had worked on the other series that Ten Thirteen Productions had created. As Frank Spotnitz stated:
:"In terms of making of the movie, we've brought together as many people as we can, not just from The X-Files but from all the shows that we did here in Vancouver – Harsh Realm, Millennium and The Lone Gunmen – and our crew is populated with all these faces that we'd worked with, over the past fifteen years. And there's even some people from the L.A. crew.”
The exterior of Monica Bannan's house was actually filmed in Pemberton, Canada, a location that Frank Spotnitz found to be beautiful but extremely cold. Although the location is shown in exterior shots incorporated into the scene in which Mulder, Whitney, Drummy and Father Joe drive to the missing agent's home, the same scene also includes footage of the actors that was filmed on a stage, using rear projection to show the exterior from inside the car. The latter method was used for all the shots in which any of the travelers appear.
Port Langley was used to film the scene in which Scully drives home, following her first encounter with Special Agent Drummy. When the production crew scouted this location, the area was under snow but this was no longer the case when the crew returned, so they imported all the snow that appeared in the scene.
The interior of Scully's home was a set in Burnaby, outside of Vancouver. The set was an old roller rink or at least sounded like one, as it was very noisy. During filming, Carter placed a carrot juice bottle on the table of the set, having just finished the drink, as he thought it would be "a nice sort of Mulder touch." Some of the artwork in Mulder's office came from a friend of Carter's who had a gallery in Vancouver and was named Monica Reyes, a name that had previously been used in her honor for a character who features in a recurring role in the series' eighth season and appears as a main character in every episode of the series' ninth season. One of the pictures on the wall of Mulder's office was by Doug Copeland, who was featured in the real Monica Reyes' gallery and had written a book Carter liked which was called "Hey Nostradamus!", so Carter stuck a Post-It - on which he wrote the book's title - onto the picture.
The scene set on the roof of FBI Headquarters was actually filmed atop a postal building. An intricately detailed set, designed by Mark Freeborn, was used to resemble the corridor inside FBI Headquarters.
The exterior of the dorms for habitual sex offenders where Father Joe lives was actually an apartment complex in Vancouver that was slated for demolition while the production crew were filming there. Snow that can be seen outside the dorms was actually all fake snow that was imported by the crew and fabricated by the film's Physical Effects Department. Bill Roe and Mark Freeborn worked together to create a creepy green glow on the location, using green lights. The production crew also created their own factory smoke for chimneys in the background and Carter came to the opinion that the smoking chimneys made the location look like London. The interior of Joe's apartment was another set and was exactly like the real apartment except that it was slightly bigger. A trans-light was incorporated into the set, to resemble daylight visible through a window of the apartment, and the set also had a porch that was used for some shots in the scene with Mulder and Scully, outside the apartment.
===Hair & Costumes===
Costume Designer Lisa Tomczeszyn was considering how her designs would impact the work of Director of Photography Bill Roe on the film, when she designed the movie's costumes. She explained:
:"Poor Bill, especially in this movie, is just presented with so much black! And it's like, 'I'm sorry, I can't do anything about it.' The FBI is navy and black. It's just such a challenge for a D.P. to get that much black against that much white. You put, you know, a black wool coat at night and it just disappears. It becomes part of night. And it's why I tried to get a semblance of at least some shine or texture in fabric, whenever I could, just so he would have something to shoot."
According to Frank Spotnitz, Billy Connolly probably had the coldest wardrobe of anybody.
Although Spotnitz and Carter had originally hoped that David Duchovny would have his own beard, the filming schedule would not permit that, so a fake beard was instead used. Filming the scenes that included the beard were made more difficult, not only due to the additional time of fitting the appliance, but also because Duchovny, finding the beard to be uncomfortable and itchy, was constantly eager to have the appliance removed. The appliance's glue also melted as the day went on, adding to the filming difficulty and Duchovny's discomfort. A hero beard and a stand-in beard were both used as a result of the problems, and, despite the difficulties, Carter ultimately came to the opinion that the individuals involved in the beard's creation had done a "fantastic job".
After Carter asked the hairstylist, one day, what she called the bun that Scully wears in her first scene of the movie and the hairstylist replied that she didn't know, Carter termed the hairstyle "shrimp tempura".
For Billy Connolly's performance in the film, his goatee was shaved off, leaving him with a short, ragged beard.
===Production===
Filming started on December 10, 2007. One of the first scenes that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson did together was filmed in early January 2008 and was set in FBI Headquarters, where Mulder and Scully are briefed by Whitney.
The scene in which Special Agent Drummy confronts Scully at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital was shot at about 3 a.m., even though the scene ultimately looked, in the opinion of both Carter and Spotnitz, like it had taken place during daylight hours.
Under Carter's supervision, the scene that introduces Mulder into the story was filmed in such a way as to hide Mulder's beard until the last moment, as the director was aware of the scene's extreme importance since it was also the first in six years to feature Mulder and Scully together. Carter thought that this technique would make the scene fun while also pushing the story along, which he felt was important. According to Carter, everyone involved in the filming of the scene worked extremely hard on it, over the course of a day, due to the scene being critical and pivotal to the movie's success.
David Duchovny did about five different, funny takes of the shot in which Mulder accepts Scully's advice that he complies with the FBI's request for his assistance. These takes were all, according to Carter, funny in a different way.
The short scene in which Mulder and Scully leave their home in a helicopter was filmed, by the cameraman alone, in the last light of day while Carter was standing in the field, watching the filming.
When the crew went to film the arrival of the helicopter atop FBI Headquarters, they were told that a helicopter sitting on the roof of the postal building used as the location was not allowed to be flown. The crew were consequently puzzled, at first, as to how they would film the scene but, after persevering, they were successful in receiving permission to fly the helicopter. Because it had rained in one direction and was dry in the other, the crew had to wet the tarmac atop the postal building. They ultimately managed to obtain one acceptable take of the shot in which Mulder and Scully are led off the roof by Drummy, who denies that he sent the helicopter.
For both the crowded, subsequent briefing scene set in FBI Headquarters and the busy scene in which Mulder and Scully first meet Father Joe, Carter was aware of there being limited space in which to move the camera. The director also found that the advice he had to give Billy Connolly about playing his role was very minimal, little more than "just steering him slightly, in one direction or another". Connolly, an ex-smoker, smoked herbal cigarettes in several scenes, as had frequently done, years before, in his recurring role of the . The scene in which Mulder and Scully first meet Father Joe was filmed immediately after Billy Connolly's goatee was shaved off. During the filming of scenes like this, Carter found that, even though he had initially been afraid of the set's trans-light, he managed to block it off.
In the early scene that shows many FBI agents following Father Joe across a snowfield, Carter had the performers, including the approximately seventy extras who were playing the agents, warm up by repeatedly singing the Canadian anthem, as he wanted to see how they would work as a unit. Carter also repeatedly had the performers run across the snowfield and - in an effort to avoid showing not only the footprints of the cast but also those of the film crew, who were hauling equipment across the snow at times because several shots were filmed a great distance from where the crew had begun the day - wide angle shots were filmed first before tight angle shots, so that the trampled snow was framed out as much as possible.
To film shots of Father Joe in the scene, Billy Connolly had to march for about fifteen minutes although Carter only told him to march in a certain direction without specifying any particular position to head to. Amanda Peet hurt her hand in the scene where Whitney finds the severed arm in the snow - one of the scenes that was shot a great distance from where the crew had begun that day - and had to see a doctor for the injury, after Carter had directed her to keep digging in the snow but had been totally oblivious to the possibility that she might harm herself. Helicopter coverage in this sequence was mostly filmed in one extremely long take.
For the scene in which Mulder and Scully talk outside Father Joe's apartment, Chris Carter told the actor playing Joe's roommate to look back at actors Duchovny and Anderson while walking away in the distance. Although Carter tried to have the distant actor framed exactly between the two lead actors, the performer playing Joe's roommate is slightly off-center, more on Mulder's side of the screen than on Scully's, when he can be seen looking back towards the camera. Carter believed that this scene came effortlessly to the lead actors, because they had previously done so many scenes with similar content.
The scene in which Scully drives home after having been approached by Special Agent Drummy was filmed late in the movie's production.
===Promotion & Secrecy===
Due to the fact that this movie was produced at a time when fans on the Internet had a much easier way of finding out what the production crew were doing than when the television series was in production, the crew felt a need to be more secretive about the upcoming film, while it was being made, so that the movie would be a surprise for fans when it was released. During production of the film, Chris Carter said:
:"I don't know if we'll succeed. But, so far, we've been able to keep it under wraps, so we've done that by having a very tight security on the story, the script, the production. So far, so good."
Extreme measures were taken in an attempt to ensure that the film's story would not leak. The movie's writers did not let anyone have a copy of the script and, at the studio, there were only three hard copies of the script, all three of which were locked in a safe. When David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner and Amanda Peet were first allowed to read the script, it was hand-delivered to each of the actors and taken away from them as soon as they had read it. David Duchovny read the script at his pool in Malibu and Gillian Anderson had to read the script on Chris Carter's computer while he was sitting in a room nearby. Xzibit was at home and was given four hours to read the script, whereas Amanda Peet was working at the time so she was given about twelve hours to read it. She read it piecemeal, in between shooting, and skipped to her parts of the script because she wanted to see if her part was good and didn't have time to read the entire script. Shortly after Chris Carter's first meeting with Billy Connolly, Carter lent his copy of the script to Connolly while the actor flew back to New York where, after reading the script, Billy Connolly sent it, in an addressed FedEx envelope that Carter had given him, back to Los Angeles.
Likewise, information was provided to the film's production crew on a strictly need-to-know basis. Most of the crew never read the script, as it was not distributed to most of them and they consequently had to do their jobs without seeing what the movie was about, even though they would realize facets about the movie when they saw scenes. Anyone who read the script basically had to first ask for about a month to do so and, after they were finally approved, they would have to come in to read the script in a room that had three cameras on them, signing in as they entered the room and out of it when they left. These tight security measures made the crew's work more difficult, however. Production Designer Mark S. Freeborn recalled:
:"From a production point of view, it was a bit painful. Because I, during the course of a film, will probably read a script thirty times and I think I may have read it, cover to cover, four times, on this."
Nevertheless, the production crew were tasked with promoting the movie while maintaining these extreme security measures. Publicity photographs were taken in one of the offices next door to the room in which the movie's early briefing scene at FBI Headquarters was filmed. For these images, Duchovny and Anderson, as Mulder and Scully, were pictured in the same pose they had done sixteen years earlier, to advertise the start of The X-Files.
One night when the production crew were filming the scene in which Scully leaves the investigation outside Father Joe's apartment, the cameraman suddenly spotted a paparazzo hiding nearby but he sprinted away when members of the production crew started running at him. Grainy footage of the filming from this night was put on the Internet before the movie's release.
On the same night, the production crew photographed Chris Carter holding a fake werewolf head. These images were subsequently put on the Internet and, although it was argued whether the picture was propaganda or not, the production crew achieved their goal of fooling some people into thinking that the film would feature a werewolf.
The production crew also tried very hard to keep secret the fact that Mulder has a beard in the film.
===Visual Effects===
In several shots from the early scene in which the FBI agents follow Father Joe, visual effects were used to very subtly erase a lot of footprints from the snow.
The Capitol Building was added into several shots that were supposedly from the roof of the FBI Headquarters, since the scene had actually been filmed in an entirely different location.
===Credits Sequences===
Both the opening and end credits sequences of this film were designed by Ramsey McDaniel, who also designed the movie's logo.
A visual effect used for the text in the film's opening credits sequence is described by Frank Spotnitz, in the movie's audio commentary, as "ice-mist". Spotnitz further explains that the visual effect has "sort of an ice-crystal element behind it".
This film is dedicated to Randy Stone and his credit is the first that appears in the movie's end credits sequence.
====Post-Credits Sequence====
The film's post-credits scene was scripted and was always planned to be part of the movie. Mat Beck remembers that the location in which the scene is set was initially only in the imagination of Chris Carter, who described it as a "jungly Caribbean location." The production crew originally wanted to film the sequence live, in Hawaii or Mexico, at the end of filming. This idea proved to be impossible in practice, however, so the scene was instead achieved by Mat Beck and the Entity FX team. Beck directed the unit that shot the footage, some of which he filmed in Kauai; the sequence was ultimately a composite shot, consisting of numerous pieces of footage from multiple sources, some of which were digital.
Land and a strip of beach, over which the camera flies before encountering Mulder and Scully, included multiple pieces of footage themselves, filmed in Kauai before being digitally stitched together. The ocean on which Mulder and Scully are rowing was also originally from Kauai but was ultimately created as an entirely digital environment, including the water, wavelets and oar turbulence around the character's boat. Reefs, in the water below the boat, were digitally painted and partly relied on reference from the footage filmed in Kauai. Sky and clouds were from a still photograph.
The island that the two protagonists are rowing toward was made up of different island parts that were chosen by Beck and other members of the production crew (for example, a beach of one island and trees from another), before these components were painted together. The scene also incorporated live footage of Duchovny and Anderson, in a fifteen-inch kiddie pool on a cold and chilly day in a Vancouver parking lot.
===Deleted Scenes===
Three deleted scenes can be found on the movie's DVD and BD releases.
*The first scene features more footage of Cheryl Cunningham pleading to be let out of her box while the Russian scientist nears her kennel, makes a failed attempt to communicate with her in his own language and offers her some Sugar Babies before being called back to work by an unseen scientist nearby.
*In the second scene, a commotion is caused when Scully is alarmed to find Father Joe visiting Christian's hospital room. Joe claims that all three have been there before and that their entire current situation has happened before, even though Scully refutes this. He quietly acknowledges that she gave up and tells her that she can't give up. With a final glimpse back at Christian, Scully hurries out, now that other members of the hospital staff are cautiously aware of Joe's presence in the room.
*In the third scene, the Feed Store Owner arrives at the edge of the precipice where Mulder drove off the cliff and, referring to himself as Tom Gibbons, reports the sighting of the crashed car below as Mulder climbs out of the wrecked vehicle. Even though Mulder tries to attract Gibbons' attention, the store owner soon leaves in a truck he arrived in. Mulder then climbs up the side of the rocky outcropping that towers over the now abandoned wreckage while Janke Dacyshyn's snowplow breaks down and he examines the damage. This is the only scene in which the Feed Store Owner is named and, as presented on the film's DVD and BD releases, includes some footage that was included in the film's theatrical version and its director's cut.
===Cast and Characters===
*David Duchovny and Scully actress returned to The X-Files in this film. They tried especially hard on scenes where they were together, as they were aware that there was major anticipation for fans of the series to see them together again.
*After an English college professor had met Carter on a plane flight to Edmonton and professed to being a fan of the series, she and a fellow English college professor appeared in this movie as two nuns who are seen by Scully as she walks through a corridor of Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital before noticing Christian Fearon being wheeled out of his room.
*Vanessa Morley, one of the actresses who played a young Samantha Mulder in The X-Files television series and also did so for both a photograph that appears in the previous movie and for another photograph that can be seen in this film, also makes an uncredited cameo appearance in this movie as an FBI agent who passes Scully and Mulder, looking straight at him, while wandering down a hallway in FBI Headquarters with another agent.
*In Mulder's phone, the contacts show names from the original T.V Series - Vince Gilligan, Rob Bowman and John Shiban, all being writers and producers.
*Bobby Ciccone, an FBI agent and friend of Chris Carter, briefly appears in the scene where Mulder and Scully are briefed by ASAC Whitney at FBI Headquarters. Carter thought it was nice to have a real FBI agent in the scene.
*Billy Connolly was cast in the role of Father Joe. According to Carter, the actor really had an idea of the character, which the director felt was important, and inhabited the role from the moment he arrived. As soon as Chris Carter roughly described the role of Father Joe to Connolly, the actor wanted to play the character because he was thrilled at the opportunity it would give him to horrify his family and friends. Connolly found the fact that he had been the initial inspiration for the character's creation to be "bizarre, in the extreme."
*Callum Keith Rennie (Janke Dacyshyn) previously played Thomas Phillips in episode and Groundskeeper in .
*Alex Diakun (Uroff-Koltoff) previously played Curator in episode , Tarot Dealer in , Dr. Fingers in , Dr. Ephraim Fabricant in the Millennium episode "Lamentation" and Greb in "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me".
*Nicki Aycox (Cheryl Cunningham) previously played Chastity Raines in episode .
*Patrick Keating (Slight Man) previously played Donald Gelman in episode and Dr. Rice in the Millennium episode "Omerta".
*Stephen E. Miller (Tom Gibbons) previously played John Truitt in episode , Tactical Commander in , Wayne Morgan in , Detective Roger Kamm in the Millennium "Pilot" and Andy McClaren in several Millennium episodes.
*Xantha Radley (Monica Bannan) previously played Waitress in episode .
*Lorena Gale (On Screen Doctor) previously played Ellen Bledsoe in episode , Nurse Wilkins in "", Dr. Patricia Moss in the Millennium episode "Sacrament" and Attorney in .
*Sarah-Jane Redmond (Special Agent in Charge Fossa) previously played Young mother in episode , Lucy Butler in several Millennium episodes and Karin Matthews in .
*Joseph Patrick Finn (Whispering Priest) previously played Chaplain in episode and Confessional Priest in .
==Cast==
* as 
* as 
*Amanda Peet as ASAC Dakota Whitney
*Billy Connolly as Father Joseph Crissman
*Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner as Mosley Drummy
* as 
=== Supporting ===
*Callum Keith Rennie as Janke Dacyshyn
*Adam Godley as Father Ybarra
*Alex Diakun as Uroff-Koltoff
*Nicki Aycox as Cheryl Cunningham
*Fagin Woodcock as Franz Tomczeszyn
*Marco Niccoli as Christian Fearon
*Carrie Ruscheinsky as Margaret Fearon
*Spencer Maybee as Blair Fearon
*Veronika Hadrava as Female Assistant
*Denis Krasnogolov as Male Assistant
*Patrick Keating as Slight Man
*Roger Horchow as Elderly Gent
*Stephen E. Miller as Tom Gibbons
*Xantha Radley as Monica Bannan
*Lorena Gale as On Screen Doctor
*Donavon Stinson as Suited Man
*Dion Johnstone as 1st Cop
*Sarah-Jane Redmond as Special Agent in Charge Fossa
*Christina D'Alimonte as Doctor's Colleague
*Vanesa Tomasino as Hallway Agent
*Luvia Petersen as O.R. Nurse
*Babz Chula as Surgeon
*Marci T. House as Sheriff
*J. P. Finn as Whispering Priest
*Beth Siegler as Anesthesiologist
*Stacee Copeland as Doctor
*Tom Charron as Sheriff Horton
*Brent C.S. O'Connor as Tow Truck Driver
*Vanessa Morley as Female Hallway Agent (uncredited)
==External links==
*Official Site from Archive.org
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=Episode Navigation=
I Want to Believe
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