A ranking by Brooks Rich
The X Files is not just one of my favorite shows of all time, it is one of the main pieces of media that made me want to be a writer. Chris Carter is one of my heroes and I think is one of TV's greatest showrunners. We have modern television because of the X Files. I don't want to get into its history today so instead here is my personal ranking of the ten scariest episodes of all time. I am coming at this as a fanatic of the show so I'm a little forgiving of some episodes considered lesser. Most of these probably wouldn't make an overall best episode list of the show but that doesn't mean they're bad. I'm mainly judging based on how scary the episode is, though story and quality will play into some. Anyway on with the list.
10. Roadrunners
The show lost a lot when David Duchovny left at the end of the seventh season. The mythology got convoluted and downright silly at times. Robert Patrick's Doggett played skeptic to now Scully's believer and the show would meander for the remaining two seasons of the original run. But that's not to say there's some good standalone episodes in season eight and nine. But early in season eight, we got a great scary hour of television that was a throwback to X FIles past. While Roadrunners might not be the best, it's definitely the creepiest. Scully is stranded in a remote desert town and is soon being endangered by the locals, who worship a parasitic slug.
9. Familiar
The recent return of the X Files has been disappointing, to say the least. The changes to the mythology pissed me off as a longtime fan and the stand alones were too weird and trying to say something about current issues in America. Familiar though was a breath of fresh air as the chilling Mr. Chuckleteeth was a monster of the week that felt like old school X Files. The episode opens with a little boy being attacked and killed by what is believed to be an animal. The plot is a little messy and that's why this one isn't higher on the list. But as far as frights go, Familiar is the only episode of the new seasons to give us old school X Files horror. Seriously. Look at that fucking thing. Pure nightmare fuel.
8. Detour
While on their way to a team-building event in Florida, Mulder, and Scully stumble onto the search for a missing man. Being the X Files Mulder soon learns that something in the woods is pushing back against development. The X Files usually rock whenever they set an episode in the woods. I think Detour is the scariest of them due to the visual imagery of the monsters blending into the foliage. The image below stayed with me for years after I first saw it. Detour uses old school horror tricks, noises, bumps in the night, but it uses them extremely well.
7. The Calusari
So this is an episode not many think is any good. It's not considered one of the worst but people don't like that Mulder and Scully are really only observers for most of it and that it has a slapsticky death where an old woman is pecked to death by chickens. But this one has always given me the creeps. It's essentially the X Files take on The Exorcist as the little dude down below is possessed by a demonic presence that picks off his family one by one. The episode is a bleak hour of television and has two of the show's most upsetting deaths, a young boy being run over by a train and a father being hung in front of his son. But good horror is disturbing and The Calusari succeeds in that regard.
6. Chinga
Stephen King writes an X Files episode about an evil doll that kills people in a small Maine town. Um, fuck yes. It's a shame King never wrote another episode of the show, I guess Carter didn't want Mulder and Scully going to Maine all the time, but thankfully we got this fun but scary episode. Evil dolls are done to death but Chinga is an interesting take on it, as it plays into the Salem Witch trials. The deaths in this are brutal and they're all preceded by great moments of horror. The background is left ambiguous and for me that works. Nothing scarier than the unknown.
5. Our Town
This one is nostalgic for me. I remember being terrified of this episode as a kid. The cold open is all kinds of terrifying and the big reveal of what's happening in a small town known for a fried chicken chain is grotesque. Like The Calusari this is a grim episode with not much levity. Our Town has a vague hint of truth to it. This maybe could happen in some capacity. The antagonist here is once again man's belief. One of my favorite story tropes is the darkness hiding within small bucolic towns and Our Town is one of the X Files best treatments of that.
4. Unruhe
A sadly underrated episode that has a frightening but sympathetic monster of the week, a disturbed man who lobotomizes women to save them from creatures he calls howlers. This one isn't overtly terrifying but it's high on the list due to the subject matter and the unsettling feeling I had when I first watched it. The cold open had this immediate feeling of dread. We knew something was going to happen but weren't sure of what it would. Then a man is stabbed in the ear, a woman is kidnapped, and a creepy photo is shown before the credits. Unruhe is a tragedy and we can't help but feel a little sorry for our baddie at the end of it.
3. Squeeze
The year is 1993. On the Fox network a show called the X Files debuted two weeks ago. It seems to be a show about two FBI agents searching for extraterrestrial life. Then the third episode airs and we meet the first monster of the week in the show's run, Eugene Victor Tooms, a mutant who must eat five livers every thirty years to survive and who can squeeze himself into tight spaces. For horror in '93 TV fans had to have HBO to watch Tales From the Crypt. The X Files made a statement with this episode and it's one I would call one of the best of the series. Squeeze is a classic horror tale on cable television, a boogeyman story with a creepy-ass monster.
2. Irresistible
This episode is Chris Carter exploring the nature of evil. The only supernatural element is when the human monster of the week is perceived as a demon as if someone this evil can't be real. Character actor Nick Chinlund is chilling in the role of Donnie Pfaster, a death fetishist who evolves to murder. One of the most haunting shots in the show's run is of a defiled grave, the casket open and the body lying at an odd angle as if it's been violated. This episode would be number one if it had more overt scares but the horror here is more thoughtful. This is the darkest episode of the X Files and also one of the best.
1. Home
No episode gave me a more visceral reaction than Home. As soon as this episode ended, I immediately locked all the doors and windows in my house. This is the ultimate horror in a small town story done by the show. Mulder and Scully head to a tiny Pennsylvania town when a deformed infant is found buried in the ground. Their investigation leads them to the Peacock brothers, who have been deformed due to inbreeding. It's X Files meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre and at the time it was terrifying. This is widely considered to be the scariest episode of television so it has to be number one. A scene where the brothers invade a house and murder the couple inside is straight out of a nightmare. I argue it might be the scariest moment in the entire show. But at its heart Home is about man at his most primal. As Mulder notes at one point, strip away progress and we'll all become animals waiting to tear each other apart.
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