A man dies without signs of being murdered but with parts of his flesh torn away. As he was about to give evidence against the Morley tobacco company, Mulder, Scully and Skinner investigate.
There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, either in The X-Files or in a horror movie. The special effects of people’s eaten faces are certainly damn creepy, but the cause of them barely even registers as an x-file. Genetically modified insects are probably pretty common these days, so killer ones shouldn’t surprise.
The fact that Mulder is infected with the insects and has to have them pumped out of his lungs in a pretty nasty sequence gives the story more of a personal resonance for the agents, but at this late stage, Mulder’s survived much worse. Likewise, the fact that it’s Morleys that is causing the problem is a nice touch (you kind of hope Cancer Man has acquired some bugs of his own) but there’s no real reason it has to be that company rather than any other fictitious one. It’s also good to see Skinner out of the office for the first time in a long while, but, again, there’s no reason he has to be involved. Presumably Mitch Pileggi simply hadn’t done the requisite number of episodes his contract allows this year.
Simply put, this is yet another example of The X-Files running short of ideas and putting out below average episodes which don’t even seem to feature a good script, anything beyond predictable plot twists or even Mulder’s dry wit anymore. Maybe David Duchovny’s far too depressed about it all to bother.
**
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