In 2002, The X-Files came to an end. While the last two years of the series underwent major changes in the cast thanks to the departure of David Duchovny as Agent Fox Mulder, Duchovny returned for the finale, where he was put on trial for the death of a government super- soldier. Most of that episode is spent recapping the show's complex alien conspiracy plotline from the previous nine seasons. Ultimately, Mulder is convicted, but he escapes from prison with the help of his few remaining allies in the FBI.

That was the end of The X-Files, but series creator Chris Carter had a plan for more.

"I wanted to get something out there that, for me, was a labor of love and a movie that has fantastic production values," Carter tells Polygon.

In 2008 came The X-Files: I Want to Believe, a standalone film unrelated to the wider mythology of The X-Files, as well as the events of the first film. Instead, it’s more of a standalone case involving paranormal elements, like the “monster of the week” episodes they did throughout the series. The movie saw former FBI agent Fox Mulder come out of hiding to aid in the case of a missing FBI agent that may be related to the disappearance of several women in West Virginia. A psychic is being consulted on the case, and an FBI agent (Amanda Peet) who admires Mulder’s work with the paranormal wants his expertise. Before long, both Mulder and Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) become absorbed in the case, which involves a killer experimenting with organ harvesting and body mutilations.

The movie is a Frankenstein story.

While the film was a moderate financial success, The X-Files: I Want to Believe received mixed to negative reviews, with many critics complaining about the underwhelming plot details. Among those who felt the movie fell short was its own director, Carter, who was forced to edit down the movie to get the PG-13 rating demanded by Fox at the time. Now, 18 years later, Carter has re-cut I Want to Believe to restore his original vision, which leans more heavily into the film’s horror elements.

The new cut, retitled The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Vrach Frankenshteyn, arrives on Hulu and Disney Plus on August 14. Ahead of its release, Carter speaks with Polygon about why he went back to rework the film, the bizarre true story that inspired him, and the meaning behind its new title.

Polygon: For the director’s cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, you gave the film a new title, “Vrach Frankenshteyn.” Would you mind explaining why?

Chris Carter: The original inspiration for the elements of the story came from a doctor in Cleveland who had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, successfully. I just found that to be amazing. It's like one of those things that verges on science fiction, which is where I always like to play, between what's scientific and what's science fiction.

I actually went to Cleveland to visit him. We sat, talked, and he told me about how successful it was. The monkey didn't survive, ultimately, but he did successfully transplant the head of a live monkey onto the head of a formerly live monkey.

That was a Frankenstein story, and the movie is a Frankenstein story. If the audience has some idea that it's a Frankenstein movie from the beginning, I think it's going to make it that much scarier and compelling.

Why is this new cut important to you?

When we made the movie, we were asked to make a PG-13 movie. We gave them a script that we thought was going to satisfy PG-13. We shot the movie we wanted to shoot, delivered it to the studio, and they said, "This isn't a PG-13 movie,” and we had to cut it back. Then we did that and satisfied them. They said it's still too scary for a PG-13 movie, so we had to cut it back further. The censors were so hardcore. I always felt like we didn't get to show the movie that we set out to make.

It's hard to make movies in the ice and snow.

Another thing is, once it was cut back, the studio lost interest in the movie and didn't promote it. So the movie wasn't seen by the wider audience that it might have gathered. The fact that it was shot almost completely in the ice and snow is another thing that makes it uncommon. You don't see movies like that all the time and there's a reason, because it's hard to make movies in the ice and snow.

How did this new version come about?

It really came as an offhanded comment to the guy who runs 20th Television, the feature wing over there. We were talking about something else, and I said, "Would you ever consider doing a director's cut?" He said, "Sure, let's talk about it." It was really just one of those happy accidents.

In contrast to a lot of director's cuts, the new version is a few minutes shorter than the original. Can you talk about why and what was cut out?

Between 2008, when the movie was released, and now, we got two X-Files reboots. So we got a lot of Mulder and Scully. When we made the movie in 2007, people hadn't seen Mulder and Scully for five, six years. Here, we've seen Mulder and Scully pretty recently, and I felt like the story that involved their emotional relationship had already kind of been told in the second reboot. So, I took the liberty to take some of that Mulder and Scully relationship out of the movie in the service of making it as scary as possible.

**What was the most important change for you? **

Just the elements of horror, the graphic quality. Now the movie plays at the pace that I originally imagined. I think it's a much scarier movie now. And with the title, Vrach Frankenshteyn, we tell people from the get-go that it's a scary movie in the vein of Frankenstein.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Vrach Frankenshteyn will arrive on Hulu and Disney Plus on August 14