The X-Files season 11 episode 5 recap and review: Ghouli

The latest episode of The X-Files features psychic teenagers, mental monsters, and more. Check out what “Ghouli” has to offer this week.

“Ghouli” opens on a teenage girl walking straight into a horror movie set. Is it dark out? Check. Does she have a flashlight held in one shaky hand? Check. Will this girl encounter a series of ominous signs, including a rotting animal corpse inside an abandoned structure? Check.

In particular, this girl is approaching the Chimera, a huge, derelict ship. However, she’s not alone. Another girl is there, and they are at odds with one another.

“Are you Ghouli?” asks one.

“No, you are,” replies the other. They soon cross paths, see the other as a horrible many-armed beast, and start slashing. If the aforementioned animal corpse sounded like a bit much, then this scene with definitely get you. The girls are left bleeding and writhing on the floor as we go to opening titles.

When we return, it’s to Scully narrating about the unsettling, trippy experience of hypnagogia. This state lies somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. It’s also where many people experience sleep paralysis. In this state, Scully sees herself in a strange home, following a menacing shadow figure.

Cut to the X-Files office, where Scully is explaining this strange dream to Mulder. She claims that she was compelled to follow the strange, dark figure, which was leading her to the Chimera. Conveniently, it’s an open X-File folder on Mulder’s desk.

The Chimera

While driving to the Chimera, the pair realizes they are being followed. They also briefly notice a strange man (played by François Chau) watching them from the ground.

That has to wait for after their meeting with a local detective, however. The detective at the crime scene tells them that the girls have no criminal history. They’re also seriously injured but should recover. The detective also mentions “Ghouli”, which the agents later discover is a Slenderman ripoff.

They interview the girls, both of whom describe vivid encounters with this Ghouli. Both say they had a very real dream, one that started with the same sleep paralysis and beckoning dark figure experienced by Scully.

Oh, and they’re both dating Jackson Van de Kamp, which happens the same adopted name for Scully’s long-lost son, William. What an almost murderous scamp!

Mulder and Scully drive up to the Van de Kamp house, where two gunshots ring out. They find two adults on the floor, unmoving, then hear another gunshot. When they run upstairs, they find Jackson also lying on the ground, apparently dead.

Scully and Mulder aren’t quite so sure it’s a murder-suicide case. The back door to the home was open, for one. Mulder also finds an open, yet full can of soda — an odd thing for a kid to do right before wreaking havoc.

While Mulder goes to confront some strange agents that have shown up, Scully looks at Jackson’s snow globe collection. Rather than mull over how strange it is for a teenage boy to have a lovingly maintained knickknack shelf, she takes one. It’s a snow globe with an old-time windmill in it. She doesn’t know why it’s important, but it is.

Later, Scully proceeds to do an autopsy on the boy. This is admittedly intense and potentially very sad for her, but can’t she change into scrubs at least? Why won’t she pull her hair back?

No time for such considerations, though, as she has an important monologue to deliver. “I don’t know if you are who I think you might be, but if you are William, this is what I’d say. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I didn’t get a chance to know you, or you get a chance to know me, or your father,” she cries. “I was trying to keep you safe.” Mulder comforts her.

William’s powers

Immediately after Mulder and Scully leave the autopsy room, “Jackson” unzips himself from the body bag and sits up.

Scully has another hypnagogia episode while napping on a couch in the hospital. She walks into a room and sees the snow globe, wondering “is this a message for me? Or am I sending a message to you?”

The coroner wakes her up suddenly. “Where did you put the body?” he asks as if Scully has somehow misplaced a corpse in a supply closet. Jackson/William has escaped, but to where?

Outside the hospital, the man from the Chimera bumps into Scully, breaking the snow globe. He apologizes, but then mysteriously tells her: “Don’t give up on the bigger picture.”

Scully and Mulder go back to the crime scene, where they find files from “Project Crossroads.” However, the agents from earlier — from the Department of Defense, it’s now revealed — interrupt them. Mulder tips the open soda over onto the second computer.

Skinner gives him a stern phone call about the incident, but Mulder hangs up on him. Must be frustrating for the Cigarette Smoking Man, who’s currently stinking up Skinner’s office. “Mulder is close,” muses the CSM. “He’ll be able to find what we’re looking for.”

So, Skinner calls Mulder’s bluff and goes out to visit them. He warns Mulder that they should drop the investigation. Why? “Project Crossroads” was apparently a defunded government project investigating alien-human hybridization. William/Jackson is obviously a person of interest to people still interested in the program.

Mind powers

Mulder eventually realizes that these confusing events are partly due to William’s psychic powers. He was able to convince his girlfriends that the other was “Ghouli,” though he thought it was just going to be a fun prank and not a crime scene. William was also able to convince everyone that he was a corpse, giving him enough time to escape. He explains as much to one girlfriend when he visits her in the hospital.

DOD agents surround the hospital along with Mulder and Scully, both groups intent on apprehending William. He makes one agent shoot another, via the now old-hat “Ghouli” trick. He does more mind tricks, making more DOD agents shoot each other and convincing Mulder and Scully that he’s a fleeing nurse.

Scully and Mulder reconcile themselves to the fact that William has really escaped. They head to a gas station as they leave town — one with the same windmill from the snow globe, in fact. François Chau appears again. “Were you following me?” he asks Scully jokingly. “It must be kismet.” Enough small talk, however; now, it’s time for weirdly meaningful lines. “Things are about to change,” he says. “You seem like a nice person. I wish I could know you better.”

About a minute after the audience figures it out, Mulder and Scully deduce that this man was the mind-bending William all along. They check the gas station surveillance camera (which comes with an audio track, unbelievably). Scully smiles, having gained some small sense of closure, and the episode ends.

THE X-FILES: Gillian Anderson in the “Ghouli” episode of THE X-FILES airing Wednesday, Jan. 31 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2018 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Robert Falconer/FOX

What to think?

So, where does “Ghouli” land? Frankly, it’s neither a runaway hit nor is it a huge stinker. It’s a decent, middle-of-the-road episode that moves along the William Scully story in good fashion. It doesn’t have any of the real frustrations of a Chris Carter-helmed episode (the CSM is thankfully reined in quite a bit, here).

Unfortunately, there’s not much here to make “Ghouli” stand out. That may seem strange for an episode that centers on a psychic, maybe partially alien teenage boy and his FBI agent biological parents, sure. But this is The X-Files, after all. You can’t really lest on your creepy laurels and expect to make a huge impression.

What worked? Ghouli was an interesting concept, though it could have used a bit more attention to make it really interesting. Maybe we could have had a bit more build-up for these two teenage girls as they became convinced that the other one was an awful monster. The reveal that it was William playing dumb mind games was unsatisfying in its abruptness.

It was also nice to see William in person. Perhaps we could have had just a little more backstory on his life, but that’s always a fine line between “too little” and “too much”. The Slenderman creepypasta tie-in was similar — it could have been fleshed out more, but perhaps it didn’t fit within the time constraints.

Next: The X-Files season 11 episode 4 recap and review: The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat

Moments like his resurrection in the morgue were genuinely satisfying, too. Gillian Anderson delivers some truly affecting moments as she grapples with the fate of her son. Hopefully, she’ll get to interact directly with William later this season.

Next week, we’ll see “Kitten,” directed by Carol Banker and written by Gabe Rotter. Despite the name, this is a Skinner episode that touches on his time in Vietnam.