The X-files series, it is too often forgotten, ended with Mulder wanting to believe in "something greater than us - greater than any alien force." Mulder's final gesture was to reach through the smoke of conspiracy to embrace not just any religious symbol, but the cross hanging around Scully's neck.
I wanted to believe there would be something similar in I Want to Believe, but even with that tease of a subtitle, it just wasn't there. I could barely find enough tread to justify Sacramone's "School of the Teachable Moment" (see below). Should that fail, there's always "The School of the Overpriced Ticket," whose graduates seek to find something redemptive despite a film because, and only because, of how much we paid to see it (witness Borat).
Can, therefore, the ugly suffering that the latest X-Files movie so gracelessly depicts be redeemed by the film's numerous visual references to "Our Lady of Sorrows"? Can Scully's wearied, suffering love for her patients be said to have a certain Marian element to it? Perhaps, but with a film this bad, even that seems forced. Believe me: I stepped in it; I know what it is.