"Unruhe"

October 27, 1996 was the night The X-Files moved to Sunday, where it would stay for the next 5 and a half years, and the move was a slam-dunk. I originally watched The X-Files for its neat standalone plots and this episode reminded me why I was hooked years ago. "Unruhe" had one of the most creative plots I've seen out of these early seasons since I started this season-by-season routine.

I've seen plenty of tv shows that use the gimmick of a camera that predicts the future. It was done "humorously" on The Twilight Zone with burglars that stole a camera and then each photograph revealed that the criminals would kill each other one at a time. There was also an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? in which kids discovered a camera with similar unhappy endings. "Unruhe" takes that in a different direction, where its not the device itself but the photographs that are being psychically manipulated. I dug that "twist."

There's more to the episode than just creepy Polaroids. Mulder and Scully are tracking down a serial killer and this is the only evidence they have to go on, well, other than boyfriends with their ears pierced in a deadly fashion. I wonder if they came up with the photographs idea first, then decided to use that as a link to a serial killer. Or did they decide on the killer, then came up with the photographs as a creative way to lead them to him? Either way, it turned into one of the more interesting chases for Mulder and Scully.

Another notable part of the episode was that the killer said Scully had "howlers" in her head. I suppose we should assume he's mentally disturbed but I already thought that the images in the photographs looked like ghosts, so now this makes more sense to me. Mulder had the FBI digitize the photos and it revealed the killer's face but I would rather believe the shapes in the background were those "howlers." Whether that's what Vince Gilligan was going for or not, this was still a great episode and I'm giving it a 4.5.

This sure looks like a "howler" to me, especially the red eyes.