X-Files: Darkness Falls

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 19 – Darkness Falls

In many ways, the forest is the antagonist in this episode – yet it is also a victim.  The scenes in the deforested area are stunning.  They really provide a vision of environmental destruction, while retaining a sense of eerie beauty.  Scully’s off-the-ground confrontation with a desiccated corpse in a web is particularly memorable.  Later, a giant felled tree becomes a broken document of history – with 500 years woven into its fiber-flesh.

The “cabin in the woods” motif is done well.  That single light bulb creates a wonderfully fragile illumination, a tiny refuge amid the vast and monstrous darkness beyond.  Yet the creature that poses the danger is not some giant Wendigo, but rather very small.

“What do you know about insects, Scully?”

“… That they’re the foundation of our ecosystem.  That there are lots of them, something like 200 million per person on this planet.”

There’s a great discussion about the mystery bugs – a moment of science in the shadows, of speculation under the weight of omnipresent menace.  The X-Files so often managed to make intelligent conversations into tense and dramatic scenes.

The bugs themselves are really not that scary – more like evil pixie dust – but Scully’s panicked reaction when they appear on her skin sells the danger pretty well.  After Scully calms down, there’s a tender moment with Mulder where she notes, “They’re oxidizing enzymes… just like fireflies.”  The fear is still present in her face, voice, posture – but now she can appreciate the beauty of the organisms, and seek refuge in the structure of rational science.

The true scope of the menace only emerges with the appearance of the biohazard personnel at the conclusion.  The “monster” is an almost-invisible multitude, something requiring quarantine procedures and emergency measures.  And so the “nature” that the ecological activists were so eager to preserve is also the source of something that must be desperately fought with fire and poison – at least now that humans have disturbed its equilibrium.

Mulder hovers beside the wounded, unconscious Scully.
“I told her it was going to be a nice trip to the forest.”

Image: Getty Open Content (Robert Hooke and Caspar David Friedrich)