The long-awaited “X-Files: I Want to Believe” is perfectly titled for fans of the TV series who desperately want to believe that it can somehow go on. But, unfortunately, the only thing this movie makes us believe is that sometimes it’s better to let it go. Like a dude with male pattern baldness holding onto the remaining strands atop his head, the filmmakers hold tight to our last bit of fascination for the adventures of Fox Mulder, the intrepid investigator of the paranormal, and Dana Scully, his M.D. partner in sleuthing and love.

The hit television drama, created by Chris Carter and featuring an hour-long episode every Sunday night from 1993 to 2002, was much beloved for its spooky exploration of fictional FBI cases involving the paranormal and supernatural, especially those involving UFOs and connections between planet Earth and the great unknown. Surely, any dozen of the nearly 200 episodes in the TV series would have made for a more interesting story than the one concocted for this movie.

For this sequel, Carter, the series' longtime writer and director, reunites Mulder and Scully with the FBI, which asks Mulder to help them to solve the case of a missing agent. The agency has hit a dead end in their investigation, aided by a psychic who, in the fast-paced opening scenes, leads them to a severed arm buried in the snow. From there, with Mulder and Scully’s assist, the probe takes the agency into a world of crime involving body parts and medical experimentation.

It certainly has its creepy moments, but “X-Files: I Want to Believe” just doesn’t deliver the chills of the TV series -- which was on a small screen! -- or of the first “X-Files” movie, subtitled "Fight the Future" and released in 1998, which marginally offered one scenario and explanation for the appearance of UFOs and was a big draw for series fans. In one sense, “X-Files: I Want to Believe” suffers some of the same fate as the TV episodes after the 1998 movie. No matter how good they were, they were perceived by many “X-Files” fans as anti-climactic.

The rapper Xzibit -- using his given name, Alvin Joiner --'X-File appears prominently in this movie as an FBI agent with a bad attitude. His performance is okay, though it is annoying to see another summer movie where a black actor is shoe-horned into a bit part. Just as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson played a two-dimensional, snaky agent in “Get Smart,” Xzibit plays a naysayer, a man who seems to be a hater when compared to the bold insights, investigative brilliance and heart of David Duchovny's Mulder.

It has been 15 years since Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) first burst on the scene in “The X-Files.” While both have matured gracefully, it could be that their tenure in these roles has not. Scully whines too much and seems overly aggrieved, while Mulder first appears as a nutcase, with the walls of his room covered with clippings about supernatural happenings. That other plus for “The X-Files,” the long-standing sexual tension between Mulder and Scully, just isn’t as tense or exciting as it used to be. Now Mulder and Scully are an old couple, and “X-Files: I Want to Believe” feels old too.

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Esther Iverem is founder of SeeingBlack.com and author of "We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006."