Stigmata
The previews for this, as I'm sure you've seen, are high-intensity, heart-pounding suspense and special effects. Billing itself as the next Exorcist, this movie ends up falling incredibly short of the hype (a la The Haunting) and long on anti-Catholocism. Not that I am defending the church - I really despise organized religion of any kind - but we get the hint.
I'm not afraid of going into the main plot in this review a little more than I usually do because the movie foreshadows like David Eddings' Belgariad series of books. The Vatican has priests decipher scrolls from ages past to try to unravel mysteries of the bible. When three priests come across a lost book of the original bible, namely "The Gospels according to Jesus", the content is potentially crippling to the church. A priest with the knowledge of the scrolls is excommunicated and hides away in South America to continue his work. When he dies, his spirit is transferred via his stolen rosary to an agnostic woman in Pittsburgh. At first, people believe she is possessed by a demon, but later it is discovered she is instead host to the priest's spirit and victim of his Stigmata. No spoiling the ending here, but it's fairly predictable.
The film didn't sit too well with me, because of the style in which it was filmed and the cliche-laden script. First off, is it an MTV video, a classicly filmed movie, or a contemporary exploration in new photography techniques? Please pick a style and stay with it for more than one scene at a time. Second, don't bother creating minor characters if all they do is take up space, and don't devote screen time to their reactions if they are that inconsequential. Also, please give characters more depth than the paper they're written on. Last, don't make everything so predictable. I got so bored with some of the plot and some of the scenes that I ended up doing an MST3K on it during the movie (example: in a scene where the lead character, while possessed, scrawls out Aramaic writing on a wall, I provided my own translation - "There's a woman who knows all that glitters is gold and she's buying...").
Overall, the movie didn't impress me. Although I usually love movies like this for no other reason than that they bash the high-and-mighty Papal regime, I really wish more depth had been given to it. Additionally, the shifting between filming styles made it difficult for me to pay attention to anything but the fact that it's been a while since I've seen a Surge commercial. See this one at a matinee or a discount theatre.
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