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“Significant Talks” Underway For “The X-Files” Return
The six-episode new season of “The X Files” was one of the best performing Fox series last season, especially on-demand (read our reviews and related editorials). Ever since the reboot launched, Fox executives have been trying to secure more episodes, Deadline learned out of TCA.
“We would love to do other seasons,” Fox Entertainment president David Madden said at the event Monday morning. “There are significant talks with all three principals”, creator Chris Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. “We are working hard, and would like to get a new season soon.”
Madden and Fox TV Group chairman Dana Walden were asked whether the network would want to make creative changes for a new season of The X-Files since the recent one was met with mixed reviews.
“I actually think the season was strong,” Madden said. “The episodes represent Chris and his team’s vision, and we will take our cue from them.”
Added Walden, “The show was off the air for a very long time. It was introduced to new viewers, and (the writers) had the challenge of filling in the mythology. Going forward, there won’t be the same obligation to reset the series.”
This past January’s return of “The X-Files” came thirteen years after the original series run and delivered us six brand new episodes from creator/executive producer Chris Carter, mixing stand-alone episodes and those that further the original show’s mythology. Stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-inhabited their roles as FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mitch Pileggi also returned as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner.
Three of the episodes were written and directed by Chris Carter, with the remaining new episodes written and directed by original series veterans Glen Morgan, Darin Morgan and James Wong.
In the opening episode, Mulder and Scully took on a case of a possible alien abductee. The all-new episodes featured appearances by guest stars, including Joel McHale (“Community”), Robbie Amell (“The Flash”), Lauren Ambrose (“Dig,” “Six Feet Under”), Annabeth Gish (“The Bridge”), Annet Mahendru (“The Americans”), Rhys Darby (“Flight of the Conchords”), Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”) and William B. Davis, who reprises his role as “Cigarette Smoking Man.”
The season ended on a massive cliffhanger that really made fans angry, but also left the door open for more episodes. It looks as if their patience will be rewarded.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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