Stigmata (1999)

Stigmata arrives from 1999 with the confidence of a music video and the theology of a bumper sticker. Patricia Arquette plays Frankie Paige, a Pittsburgh hairdresser who acquires a rosary and a set of bleeding wounds, plus an Aramaic vocabulary she did not order. Gabriel Byrne is the Jesuit sent by Rome to investigate. Jonathan Pryce plays the cardinal who would prefer the matter go away, which it will not. The film was a surprise commercial success, opening above The Sixth Sense, and critics greeted it with the enthusiasm of a man reviewing his own biopsy. Roger Ebert found it hilarious. He was not being kind.

On the matter of representation, the ensemble is mixed in the manner of a late-1990s studio picture, with Nia Long in a supporting role and no commentary attached. Portia de Rossi appears in the cast list, which is the closest the film comes to any queer content, since none exists on screen. Frankie sits at the center of the story, though she spends most of it convulsing and levitating while men in collars examine her; the film has no thesis about her beyond her usefulness as a vessel. Race never enters the conversation, and neither does the environment. Nobody here is fat or autistic, and nobody is poor in a way the script cares to examine. The villain is an institution, but the grievance is doctrinal, not economic. Rome suppresses a text, not a workforce.

The film's one genuine provocation is textual. A lost gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, surfaces in Aramaic scrawls on an apartment wall, and the Church would rather it stayed lost. That is a real revisionist gesture, delivered through possession mechanics instead of argument. Then the credits roll and a caption informs us that the Catholic Church rejects the document as heresy, which is the film's way of making sure we got the point. It is a light touch of sermonizing, no more. A curious artifact: a horror film that wants to scandalize the Curia and settles for rattling the pews.