Film Review: Stigmata (1999)

This is my review of Stigmata (1999), the religious horror movie that challenges the Catholic Church’s monopoly of the word of Jesus… by torturing an atheist nearly to death and ignoring the existence of all the other Christian religions. Warning: SPOILERS.

In Brazil, Father Andrew Kiernan investigates a statue weeping blood to see if it’s a real miracle or another hoax. Meanwhile, in the US, Frankie Paige starts to get mysterious wounds that mimic Jesus’s. When the Vatican sends Kiernan to investigate, he realizes that the two cases may be connected and that solving them will shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church…

The church with the weeping statue used to be run by the recently deceased Father Alameida, whose very well preserved corpse is kept on display. Kiernan finds the church filled with people who just stand there while the statue of the Virgin weeps, doves fly over them (I’m guessing they’re magical, non-pooping doves), and a sudden gush of wind blows out the candles that then relight themselves again. On his way there, Kiernan sees people on wheelchairs being taken to the church, but there’s no mention of miracle cures. This basically means people just stay there watching that little show in awe every day. Well, it is a small village, so there’s probably not much to do anyway. Oho, but not all of them are that respectful. A kid with an enterprising mind steals Father Alameida’s rosary and sells it to an American tourist despite the warnings of a market vendor.

Kiernan, who works for the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, returns to the Vatican and shows his superior, Cardinal Houseman, evidence that the weeping statue could be a real miracle. Turns out he had been sent to look into the supposed apparition of the Virgin on the side of a building (fake, just a water stain) and Houseman dismisses all of these new findings and tells him to stop investigating that church. At the same time, the dead priest’s rosary is making its way to Frankie Paige, a party girl hairdresser who’s a self-avowed atheist and fears she might be pregnant from her lame boyfriend. Soon, though, she’s ending up in the hospital with two wounds cutting through her wrists that bleed profusely when touched. At first, the doctors think it’s self-harm, but when she gets lashing cuts on her back after a crazy scene in a runaway train, they decide it must be a special kind of epilepsy that comes with flower smells, deep wounds made with a non-existent weapon on both wrists (seriously, how the fuck could she have done both cuts?), and randomly appearing doves. Before the lashing, she asks a priest, Father Durning, if he’s Andrew Kiernan, and takes some nun’s cross. Oh, and the lashing appears on the security camera footage, which Father Durning sends to the Vatican. Guess who goes to investigate? Father Kiernan, of course.

While Frankie’s friend Donna may be supportive, her other coworkers are a little wary of her and even regular patrons don’t want her cutting their hair. Look, I know this is supposed to be unfair to poor Frankie, but since everyone, including herself, believes she has untreated epilepsy that causes her to self-harm and hallucinate, I can’t blame people for not wanting her holding sharp objects near their faces. Frankie doesn’t help her cause by immediately flirting with Father Kiernan when he shows up at the salon. This doesn’t seem like normal behaviour for her, which means it’s part of the possession? That’s going to look weird when we find out what’s going on. The filmmakers didn’t really think this one through, did they? Anyway, Kiernan tells Frankie that only very religious people get stigmata and she’s an atheist so it can’t be that, even if she has the lashes and the wrist cuts and writes stuff in Italian, a language she doesn’t speak. Well, I guess this means everything’s fine and she can go party with her friends, then.

Frankie is having fun on the dance floor while David Bowie’s The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell is being mangled, when suddenly her forehead starts bleeding as if someone put a crown of thorns on her head. A very soft crown of thorns. Really, I expected way more blood. Also, I had totally forgotten about that song, which, by the way, is from the album ‘hours…’, and listened to it again after watching the movie. I don’t get what was the point of reducing it to the chorus, which is basically just the name being repeated over and over again. Moving on. A bleeding Frankie runs out of the club and into the middle of the road. When Kiernan finds her, after being attacked by wind and vapour (because this is the lamest possession EVER), she’s manically carving something on a car with a broken bottle. She also speaks in an unknown language. It’s obviously Aramaic. I don’t speak Aramaic, but I’ve seen enough movies and TV series to know that’s the go-to ancient language for Bible-based shenanigans. Clearly, Father Kiernan is less knowledgeable because he has to call a friend in the Vatican, Father Delmonico, to get his answer.

After Frankie gets her third stigmata, Kiernan takes her to Father Durning’s church. There, he tells her Jesus was in fact crucified by his wrists and not his hands like you see in every crucifix everywhere. So, her stigmata are historically accurate. Do keep this in mind for later, please. Given Frankie’s altered state, it makes perfect sense for her to go back to her place, where she takes a stroll on the roof, before locking herself at home writing in, you guessed it, Aramaic on the walls. When Kiernan goes to check on her, whatever is possessing her tells him she’s a messenger and not important because said entity is an asshole. By the way, there’s always water dripping at the apartment for reasons unknown. There are also some of those non-pooping doves and everyone keeps smelling flowers. Kiernan sends pics of the writing to his Vatican friend and then he and Frankie bond. He tells her he used to be into organic chemistry until he got tired of looking for answers and decided it was easier to just say a wizard did it. Unfortunately, the mood is ruined when Frankie gets the foot stigmata. This is especially troubling because next is the spear one and that’s FATAL.

Father Delmonico calls Kiernan and tells him the writing is from a super secret gospel said to have been written by Jesus himself that the Church wants to suppress, so he should destroy all the evidence and forget the whole thing. He also calls some other guy, who we later find out is named Petrocelli, and tells him the Jesus Gospel has resurfaced. However, Cardinal Houseman’s evil assistant finds the Aramaic pics on Father Delmonico’s computer and shows them to his superior. Meanwhile, in the US, Frankie actually seems to be getting better – her wrists are healing and she painted over the Aramaic. Then, she starts hitting on Kiernan and when he refuses to break his vows, she, or more accurately, whoever is possessing her, goes psycho and starts throwing him around the apartment. She accuses Kiernan of joining the Church because he hates women. While commandeering a woman’s body, driving her mad, and cutting her in horrible ways in a process that will end in her death. “Frankie” also complains about all the virgins and eunuchs in the Church. Yeah, I don’t think the problem with the Catholic Church are the people keeping their pants on. After cutting herself some more, crying blood, and engaging in some cruciform levitation, Frankie finally gets back to normal. She and Kiernan are cuddling in bed when the evil, Gospel-suppressing Cardinal shows up. Frankie is taken to a convent and Kiernan is told to leave. He does and meets Father Petrocelli, who worked with Father Alameida to translate the Jesus Gospel, which contains instructions on how to build the Church after his death. Hint: it didn’t involve a middleman. In fact, Jesus is everywhere and in everything, which is a bit disturbing. Is he watching everyone? And if he’s everywhere, why couldn’t he stop the several Christian Churches from speaking in his name? What does he actually do? The movie never gets around to explaining any of it, just that the Catholic Church isn’t needed. And neither are all the Churches purporting to follow the teachings of Christ, but everyone just acts as if the only one who would be affected by this is the Vatican. This is why Cardinal Houseman wanted the translation stopped, but Father Alameida refused.

Father Alameida was a deeply religious man, who wore gloves because he too had stigmata, though clearly not the historically accurate type or all he would’ve needed was long sleeves. He was very dedicated to showing the world this new Gospel, so dedicated that he possessed Frankie to do it… and wasted time hitting on Kiernan. Those are some weird priorities. Cardinal Houseman tries to exorcise Frankie and is throttling her when Kiernan returns. He kicks his boss out of the room and pleads with Father Alameida to let Frankie go. He does, after an embarrassing scene involving fake fire and another special dove. Later, we see Frankie and Kiernan frolicking in the convent garden. She’s wrapped up in a virginal white sheet, like some Virgin Mary statue (and in case you missed the similarities, the camera helpfully pans to said statue), and plays with yet another dove (seriously, where are all these doves coming from?), probably healed from her atheism by all the religious torture.

Kiernan returns to Brazil, no longer wearing his priest clothes, which probably means he quit. He goes to Alameida’s church and finds the extremely well preserved Jesus Gospel hidden under a floorboard right next to the still weeping statue. The movie ends with some info about the real Gospel that inspired it: it was discovered in 1945, in Nag Hamadi, and it’s called “The Secret Sayings of the Living Jesus”, aka The Gospel of St Thomas; scholars say it’s the closest record of the words of the historical Jesus, but the Vatican calls it heresy. How shocking. Of course, this lame attempt at giving this boring movie some deeper meaning conveniently ignores the other scholars who think the Gospel is bullshit, that it’s the product of a war between early Christian sects, or that the more controversial statements were added at a later date. But hey, at least they all agree Jesus was real, unlike the other other scholars who don’t even believe there was a historical Jesus. Scholars are a complicated bunch.

VERDICT

Stigmata is a lousy possession movie. Clearly, demons do it better. It’s also annoyingly religious. If I’m going to be asked to believe in the power of God, there better be some crazy shit going on. This isn’t even a proper critique of the Catholic Church. Also, introducing a friendlier version of Christianity by nearly torturing an innocent woman to death is… a choice. It doesn’t help that Frankie becomes nothing but a vessel being led around by Church men, including Kiernan. And Father Alameida pushing them together like that was just creepy.

By Danforth