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Stigmata
(1999) |
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Sublimely ridiculous pseudo-religious MTV style Exorcist farce is endurable only because of how rotten it is. Wainwright's attempt at spinning a new angle on The Exorcist is about as close to plagiarism in the opening scenes as can be. Then the new version takes off into orbit for its inspiration and lurches from one mind boggling scenario to the next. Firstly the cause of all the mayhem that attacks our happy go lucky and spiritually bankrupt hairdresser Frankie Paige is due to her mothers bad taste in jewellery. If that old bag hadn't been so miserly and miserable she wouldn't have picked up that hideous necklace somewhere in Brazil to send her daughter. Little did the old witch know that the trinket was possessed with the tortured spirit of Father Almeida, who had been banished from the Catholic Church for his blasphemous ideas. Anyway, as tends to be the case with trinkets found in dusty caves, this one should have been avoided. Alas, no such luck as Frankie receives the beads and about two seconds later her life starts going awry. As in the wretched BATS, all the scenes of bloodletting and violence are edited into the film as flashes and loud swishes and whooshes. This represents a new technique in suggestion of extreme violence without actually showing anything but series of blurs on screen. Perhaps a new technique to appear to be violent and gruesome, yet get away with killing two birds with one stone. Firstly the censor is placated as there is no overt violence and secondly the special effects man needn't be employed as the effects are merely created by editing. Stigmata is full of such scenes of sudden blitz attacks of flashes and swishes and strobe light effects! So, due to this awful trinket our poor Frankie starts suffering attacks of Stigmata which means that she is being meted out the same treatment that Christ was at the time of crucifixion. There are some truly hysterically funny scenes during the 90 minute duration of the movie. It seems that whenever Frankie is traumatised by a vicious lacerating attack her therapy seems to be to wind up at some disco or club. Seems the natural place to convalesce! There is a remarkable scene in the subway where our Frankie starts picking on some old Priest without any good reason. Poor guy was simply minding his own business. Then later Frankie starts spouting foreign languages and speaking in a voice similar to that of the devils from The Exorcist. Poor Frankie all she ever did was cut hair, and because of her wretched mothers poor taste she gets saddled with what is clearly an infected item. This Stigmata business, it appears can spread from person to person through infection because there is no other explanation for events that unfurl on screen. From the logic applied in this film you could turn into a stigmatic simply by using the same toilet as another infected person. The stigmata is presented less as a religious phenomena or miracle but as a virus that can be transmitted through trinkets and exchange of bodily fluids. How appropriate and equally, how absolutely stupid. Gabriel Byrne evokes chuckles as miracle busting new age priest while Patricia Arquette is full of energy as the stigmata-cursed Frankie. The dialogues are among the funniest heard perhaps since Showgirls. This film is so awful that it's actually works quite well as an unintentional comedy/farce. MGM will have the last laugh though as the film rode the publics desire for things supernatural in 1999 to make about $60 million in the US alone. Risible.
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