A friend recently dragged me to a preview screening of Stigmata. I was highly reluctant...after the big Blair Witch disappointment, I became convinced that nobody knows how to scare people any more...wrong!

If you've seen the trailer (9mb download quicktime), you're probably expecting something along the lines of The Exorcist, and you're partly right. The kind of fright this film offers is similar - Roman Catholic traditions and mythology are milked for everything they're worth, and the feeling in The Exorcist of puny humans in the grip of inexorable forces from beyond our ken is matched here.

There are also elements here of the sleeper hit The Prophecy, which you may recall starred Chris Walken as a butt-kickin' foul-mouthed angel. In Stigmata, Patricia Arquette plays Frankie, a young woman who is possessed, alright, but the possessor is an angel, not a demon, one who could well have kicked butt right alongside Walken's "Gabriel."

In a grimly apocalyptic story suitable for these end-times, Frankie is a young club-hopper who learns that angelic possession is no better than the other kind. Especially annoying are the stigmatic wounds that burst open on her body at the most inconvenient of times - relaxing in the bath, kickin' back with her crew at the club, etcetera. These scenes are particularly excruciating (maybe it's just me, my mom took me to see The Robe when I was 4 and I spent the rest of my childhood dreaming that I was having nails pounded into my flesh).

Playing opposite Arquette is Gabriel Byrne as Father Andrew Keenan, who investigates miracles on behalf of the Vatican - a sort of anti-Fox Muldur, whose attitude causes his superiors to ask him whether he considers himself "a scientist or a priest." Of course there's conflict ahead for Keenan...with the forces of the Church, of Heaven and his own faltering faith.

Ecclesiastical horror is a hard thing to judge - not everybody grew up with crucifixion nightmares - but Stigmata's punk-goth approach to religious mythology and its grim atmosphere was enough to coax me to dump all my stock at the Hollywood Stock Exchange on STIGM. So far, I've picked up over 20% on my investment!

older cool stuff:

Puffy Listening Room
Mark Twain and Pitcairn Island

external link:
An unusual Stigmata site...