by Kate Beach, Staff Writer

There’s nothing like a good Catholic horror story. For centuries, artists in all mediums have tapped into the church’s goth vibes and flair for the dramatic to tell vivid, operatic stories about demonic possession, powerful men operating in the shadows, and the pleasures and pains of being a true believer. Film in particular is fertile ground for Catholic horror, from genre legend The Exorcist to a current resurgence that includes Immaculate and The First Omen, a prequel exploring the origins of 1976 classic The Omen. 

Stigmata is not a good Catholic horror story. 

But 25 years on, it’s a fascinating time capsule of Y2K horror and, maybe unexpectedly, rave culture. It also leans hard into the look of Catholicism, evoking and sometimes directly referencing both historic art and the legacy of Catholic horror. 

Personally, I get the fascination with the Catholic aesthetic, because I have it too. I was raised in the comparatively dull Presbyterian church, and the two years I spent in Catholic school managed to seep into my bones. I love the theater of Catholicism, especially the weird stuff and the gore. I write this under the gaze of a St. Lucy statue I picked up at an antique store: her plucked out eyes sit on a plate in her hands. I love the infinite varieties of rosaries, from cheap plastic to ornate and bejeweled to glow in the dark. When The Young Pope premiered on HBO in 2016, I hosted a watch party and stuck communion wafers into cupcakes for the occasion. In 1999, the year Stigmata came out, I sent away for a rose petal from St. Therese, laminated on a card. I was ready. 

1999 in horror was all highs and lows. Some of the best horror films of the decade (arguably of all time) were released: The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense. Both were critical and box office triumphs, and both upended genre conventions to shock and fascinate audiences. 1999 also saw the release of shiny, empty remakes of horror classics like The Haunting and House on Haunted Hill. Stigmata, which was not a remake, a sequel, or a genre innovation, premiered on September 10. It became the first movie to dethrone The Sixth Sense after five weeks of box office dominance. It went on to make $50m on a $18m budget, but it was quickly and harshly savaged by critics. Roger Ebert called it “possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism - from a theological point of view,” and he wasn’t wrong; the theology is…messy. The story isn’t much better.

Stigmata opens with an obvious homage to The Exorcist, a bold move for a film that ended up with a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. Both movies begin with the sun beating down on a place meant to seem exotic and ancient, ready to reveal a powerful artifact. In this case, it’s a rosary stolen off the corpse of a priest in rural Brazil. Father Alameida was afflicted with the stigmata in his life, and now Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) has arrived from the Vatican to investigate a statue of Mary that has been crying blood since Alameida’s death.   

After a brief scene establishing our MacGuffin and Father Kiernan, we’re treated to a title sequence that establishes Stigmata’s whole vibe pretty completely. Flashing lights and pulsing beats over angelic-sounding chants, composed by Billy Corgan. Credits float across the screen in a papyrus-adjacent font and scenes of club kids dancing are cut with paintings of Jesus and the saints. But this isn’t just a Vatican rave fever dream; it’s a day in the life of Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette), Pittsburgh club kid, industrial loft dweller, and atheist future stigmatic. It’s made clear that Frankie enjoys a carefree life of clubbing, sex, and, presumably, sandwiches with fries on them. Her equally freewheeling mother spends her time traveling the world, sending Frankie trinkets from her various destinations. Her latest delivery contains the rosary, and the movie takes pains to show Frankie as so non-religious that she calls it a “necklace.” It’s not long before a series of highly stylized, moderately graphic sequences take place, inflicting Frankie with the wounds of Christ and intensifying each time. But it’s not just the wounds. She’s having visions. She’s speaking Aramaic. She’s also demanding to see Father Kiernan, whom she’s never met.  

For the rest of the movie, Frankie and Father Kiernan are exposing a Vatican coverup, attempting to cure Frankie’s stigmata, and maybe, just maybe, falling in love. None of it makes much sense. But watching it in 2024 made me ache with nostalgia for the admittedly ridiculous Y2K aesthetic. Frankie’s apartment is full of inflatable furniture and mannequin parts, and Frankie herself is like a walking Delia’s ad, all chunky jewelry and gigantic plastic platform sandals. The stigmata sequences are full of quick cuts and look like music videos, which makes sense considering director Rupert Wainwright got his start there. He uses big set pieces like a speeding subway car or a blue-tinted, windswept alley to let Frankie’s big stigmata moments run wild.

Women’s bodies are at the center of countless Catholic horror stories. A demon is possessing her. The Antichrist is growing inside of her. Stigmata is no exception as we watch Frankie thrashed around like a rag doll by unseen forces. But for a 1999 possessed horror heroine, she’s not so bad. She’s reasonably fleshed out, a fun and confident party girl with a real presence, though a lot of that can be attributed to Arquette’s performance. Stigmata already had a relatively unique take on possession stories with its focus on the wounds of Christ, and I think there could be something really interesting to say in a story about a woman experiencing the stigmata, which I previously assumed was rare. Writing this piece, I learned that 87% of acknowledged stigmatics have been women, which the film disregards completely in favor of recounting the stories of famous stigmatics like Padre Pio and Francis of Assisi. In one scene, a possessed Frankie comes close to commenting on the Church’s combined reverence and revulsion towards women’s bodies, but the script pulls its punches.

Stigmata is not a beloved classic, or a so-bad-it’s-good guilty pleasure, or an underrated gem due for a reappraisal. It’s just not very good. But, it has its moments. Arquette is beautiful and charismatic as Frankie, Byrne is charming and cerebral, and Nia Long does her best to be a supportive friend in a purple wig. Some of the sequences are surprisingly beautiful and stylish, and the movie has a real sense of humor. Priests shush each other in the Vatican libraries, send each other clandestine faxes in Aramaic, and hunch over gigantic desktop computers. There’s a kind of hilarious pair of shots that juxtapose a centrifuge spinning Frankie’s blood samples and the monstrance that holds the Eucharist. It’s a weird, preposterous mess set to a Billy Corgan composed soundtrack. But give it a look for its 25th birthday. 

Steal the rosary, take the ride.