Stigmata (1999)

This movie is somewhat garbage and too simple, the subject matter of the movie, Christianity, has nothing to do with how ridiculous the movie is. There are scenes in the movie that is so "out-of-the-blue" with no apparent reason whatsoever for it to happen in the first place, making it cringe-worthy to watch. Is this horror? Meh.

Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is in southern Brazil to investigate a bleeding Madonna statue. He wants to do more investigating but his superior rejects him. In America, Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) is a single alternative hairdresser attacked by an invisible force giving her the signs of stigmata. She gets attacked again on the subway which comes to the attention of Kiernan.I love the brooding rain-soaked Gothic atmosphere at first but the movie goes nowhere. It's not scary for one minute. It's a lot of religious hogwash. It starts off with interesting tension but slowly fades away. Her attacks are slow-motion, pounding and repetitive. After the third time, I lose interest and it slowly grinds to a halt. It becomes another possession horror without anything new or interesting.

Patricia Arquette plays Frankie Paige, a trendy, alternative young woman who lives on her own in a massive Pittsburgh loft apartment decorated with all manner of cool, designer furniture and ornaments. And she's a hairdresser in a beauty parlour/tattoo studio. If you can swallow that, then you should have no problem with the film's supernatural storyline, which sees Frankie displaying signs of the stigmata after becoming possessed by the spirit of a dead priest who is determined to reveal the secrets of a 5th gospel written by Jesus himself immediately before his crucifixion.Stigmata is a reasonably entertaining piece of religious horror nonsense thanks to fine performances from its excellent lead cast, which also includes Gabriel Byrne as miracle debunking priest Father Andrew Kiernan, and Jonathan Pryce as a Vatican Cardinal trying to protect the Catholic church at all costs. What prevents the film from being a more successful affair is the distracting style of director Rupert Wainwright, who conducts proceedings as if he was making a music video for MTV. Yes, the visuals are aesthetically impressive, with stunning lighting and some flashy editing, but they don't suit the material and prove very distracting.After much thrashing around by Arquette as she suffers the stigmata wounds amidst dripping water, flapping doves and shafts of blue light, and some weak Exorcist-style possession scenes, the film wraps things up nicely with the message that you don't need churches to worship God, for he is everywhere. Oh, and the notion that the Catholic church is a massively corrupt organisation heavily involved in all manner of conspiracies. Nothing new there then.

Usually I don't do reviews of bad movies but when I originally saw "Stigmata" on DVD in the late 90s I actually thought it was pretty good. Now as I re-watch it over 10 years later I can definitely say, What the hell was I thinking? It feels dated, overly stylized and just plain bad all around.Taking place in the water logged city of Pittsburg, where it is constantly raining and dreary. Patricia Arquette plays Frankie Paige a hair stylist who becomes afflicted with the stigmata, or the wounds of Christ, after receiving a rosary from her mother as a gift. The rosary belonged to a recently deceased South American priest whose church recently had their statue of the Virgin Mary bleed. Frankie is an atheist and the stigmata usually only appears to extremely devout Catholics. The wounds of the stigmata cannot be transferred through physical items. Its also has nothing to with demonic possession, actually quite the opposite. We then meet Father Andrew Kiernan, a Vatican investigator of miracles. He is sent to meet with Frankie and we learn that she is 23 years old, yeah sure you are and I am Abraham Lincoln. They talk and she tries to seduce him, and he refuses for the most part. Later on she seems to be possessed by some evil spirit and writes all over her apartment walls. This is supposedly is a lost gospel of the Bible written by Jesus himself. It tries to be scary and horrific but epically fails.This train wreck was directed by Rufus Wainwright and like a lot of movies in the 90s it suffers from over stylization (AKA The Tarantino Effect). Style over substance and style just for the sake of trying to be "cool". It pays no attention to factual accuracy and just kind of creates it own thing on the fly. The musical score sound like something out of the 80s and not in a good nostalgic way. The entire look and feel of the film feels pretty dated and it wasn't even made that long ago. This is definitely a view at your own risk movie.