Stigmata (1999, R)

Directed by Rupert Wainwright

Story by Tom Lazurus

Written by Tom Lazurus and Rick Ramage

Starring Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, and Jonathan Pryce

As Reviewed by James Brundage (MovieKritic2000)

I've got a thing about horror movies… I hate 'em. Almost every horror film put in front of me comes off with a review filled with complete disgust at its plotless nature and its annoying dialogue. Even more than horror films, however, I hate movies about the end of the world. Imagine my surprise when Stigmata was neither.

Although horror is the closest place to put Stigmata, it actually lies in the category of religious drama. Thankfully, the film has nothing to do with the end of the world. What it has to do with is the end of the Catholic Church via a gospel according to Christ that is delivered in the form of a possessed Frankie Paige (Arquette).

It has all of the elements required of a film to appeal to the mainstream: suspense, a cool soundtrack, a good-looking actress and an actor that your date will think is sweet because of the Irish accent. Yet something lurks beyond this. Something is hidden in the folds of what appears on the surface to be a complete idiocy of a mainstream film.

The film features, although laying it on thick at numerous times, an anti-Catholic church political agenda. It spends half of its time scaring most of us with a mystery and a few Exorcist rip offs, and the rest of the time involving us with a conspiracy concerning the covering up of the Christ Gospel (as the movie calls it).

Luckily, the people to whom which this will hit too close to home will probably not be found in a movie theatre for a film already declared a sacrilege. As many Lenny Bruce-esque jokes as I could prattle off in the next few paragraphs, I will refrain from doing so for the fact that, at least in this case, I do not want to offend anyone.

The film has an incredibly dark and stylish feel to it, befitting of the better half of MTV directors who made the transition to film. A sad offshoot of this industrial feel is that they felt the need to pick Pittsburgh as their locale -- a city which no rickety subways that is in general about as dark as Mickey Mouse (although, to its credit, it is highly industrial). Glossy effects are used, but not overused. A techno soundtrack and a heavy percussion score marks the film's suspenseful half while allowing just enough time for our brains to contemplate what is happening.

One of the things that is scary as a society came in an ad-libbed review a friend gave me of The Blair Witch Project: "It made you think, and that was scary." Although this was highly ambiguous as to whether the fact that you thought during a horror film was scary or the thoughts you were having were scary, Stigmata barks up the same tree. It makes you think. The thoughts you think are downright terrifying, the distrusts in Catholicism are as vast and as paranoid as anything Chris Carter thought up for "The X-Files." At the same time, however, Stigmata leaves you in such a way as to examine the role of God and faith and the church in life, a subject too many of us spend too little time thinking on.

With this final couplet I end my review,

It's sad when Hollywood's more pious than you.