Stigmata (1999)

Excellent, a Must See

Am I Missing Something?

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

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.

It has been years since I first watched this film, however, I never watched the trailer before hand. My dad suggested it to me shortly after its DVD release as I wouldn't have been old enough at the time.It was an incredible film that left me feeling tense, not scared at any points to recall, I really don't believe this film was meant to be a horror at all, so anyone reviewing it as "Not scary enough" doesn't really make sense to me... this film has a strong storyline with interesting characters, jumpy BOO scenes would ruin the atmosphere of the film.The alternative endings are interesting to watch too... I remember feeling teary at points in the film, it also felt rather psychological to me, which I love films like K-Pax and Mysterious Skin for as well. I think if you want more of an alternative "Horror" film, this is definitely a recommended one. But don't expect to feel scared...The only major fault I had was the trailer, which I watched recently when trying to explain to my boyfriend why this should be added to one of our "Movie nights". MY GOD WAS IT A BAD TRAILER. No wonder people felt disappointed/mislead. The trailer to me implies it will be a jumpy film and tries to be far too much like the Exorcist, when honestly it is nothing like The Exorcist in my opinion.I was incredibly shocked to see this only has a 6 rating... I was expecting to see around the 7.5-8 mark for this... So please, don't judge it by the trailer. Or the reviews about it not being scary or not a lot happening, it's not meant to be that type of film.It also has a fantastic soundtrack!

A priest from the Vatican is sent to Sao Paulo, Brazil to investigate the appearance of the face of the Virgin Mary on the side of a building.While there he hears of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding tears in a small town outside of the city.Meanwhile, a young woman in the U.S. begins to show signs of stigmata, the wounds of Christ.The priest from the Vatican links up with her and cares for her as she is increasingly afflicted by the stigmata.Her ranting and raving finally begins to make sense to the priest who starts to question what his religion has stood for for the last 1900 years.....Stigmata is not a scary film. In fact, it's quite difficult to put this movie into a genre. Unless there was a 'heavily edited, made to look like a music video type' movie, because this is what basically the film is, all style and no substance.But it's quite endearing thanks to the two leads.Arquette is Alabama from True Romance without the fun or adrenalin, and Byrne is basically the same character from End of days, but playing for a different team.And we spend the duration of the film watcing arquette get wounded and everyone thinking she is mad, apart from Byrne, who thinks she is revealing something that happened at the time of the Crucifixion.But Jonathon Pryce won't let him go deeper, because he's still fresh from bad guy duty in 'Tomorrow never dies'.It's a confusing film, but done with a lot of class, and a lot good camera work.If more had gone into the story than the effects, we would have had a winner, but we just have, a great pop promo without the song

Another Exorcist? No, this is actually watchable. (Exorcist: 40 minutes - nothing happens and that nothing happens very boringly. Then girl urinates, vomits, is potty-mouthed, there's lot of medical examinations and it all ends with silly but unentertaing exorcism scene which comes dangerously close to parody commercial which I saw in TV years ago. And yes, book is even worse dreck - it is nothing but possessed Regan's bodily functions!) In Stigmata, script throws flowers, candles and Catholic imagery for good-looking (and yes, self-consciously stylish) effect with controversy-begging storyline - there's conspiracy theories involving Catholic Church, priest hero falling for possessed, stigmatized heroine etc. Catholic Church disliked it, so did critics, but I enjoyed the ride.