This movie isn't sure what it's about. It starts out being about Frankie Paige, a hairstylist who is suddenly afflicted with the marks of the stigmata (wounds of Christ) even though she's an atheist. It ends up being about the Lost Gospel of Jesus. Poor Frankie's problems start after she gets a rosary in the mail from her mom. The rosary was stolen from a dead priest, so within the first ten minutes of the movie you know that the rosary and therefore the dead priest has something to do with her getting the stigmata. This is called, "giving the plot away," and if you have half a brain you could predict what happens in this movie from there.
After this we see poor Frankie undergo all sorts of horrors as, one by one, she gains the wounds of Christ, and of course there's blood everywhere, and lots of whining about "Why me." Then comes Gabriel Byrne as a skeptical priest, and of course he's won over by her story and by her. The movie did not deal well with the relationship between Father Andrew. They fudged it by having a long dreamlike sequence where they sit and have coffee and talk while music plays and the camera cuts back and forth between them. This is supposed to imply that they talked for hours and got to know and like each other, but in reality it simply implies that their conversation was too tremendously boring to bear, and immediately after that conversation she gets the nails through her feet anyway, to keep your interest.
The rest of the movie is a hodgepodge of The Exorcist, The Omen, and excerpts/misreadings of the Gospel of Thomas (which, by the way, is a real book). The special effects are decent, and both Arquette and Byrne do their best to bring humanity to an otherwise lifeless script. Jonathan Pryce's villainous Cardinal is totally predictable and one of the most inept performances I have ever seen from him.
At the end of the movie, after they have spent so much time on Frankie and made us care about her, she just wanders off, wearing a bedsheet. I swear, that's actually how they get rid of her character; she gets un-possessed, and she just wanders off looking at her wrists wondering where her wounds went. This is heinously bad writing. The movie spends a lot of time getting you to care about Frankie, and then she just...wanders...off? Did she go back and become a hairdresser? Did she keep in touch with excommunicated Father Andrew and go out with him? Did she become a homeless person? Did she drop down a manhole? ANYTHING would have been preferable to just having her wander off into the foggy mist outside the rectory. It's just plain BAD WRITING. It shows contempt for the audience and for the characters, and poor Patricia Arquette, who really puts a lot into this character and in the end gets nothing out of it.
This movie is basically a complete failure; it builds up and builds up, and then the payoff is not only miniscule, but extremely unsatisfactory. It's not unresolved in an "arty" way, the movie is unresolved in a way that screams "BAD SCRIPT!"
In short this is a waste of time except for the special effects. If you're into watching Patricia Arquette thrash around and bleed a lot, and I hope you're not, you might want to watch this movie. Otherwise, don't even bother.
After this we see poor Frankie undergo all sorts of horrors as, one by one, she gains the wounds of Christ, and of course there's blood everywhere, and lots of whining about "Why me." Then comes Gabriel Byrne as a skeptical priest, and of course he's won over by her story and by her. The movie did not deal well with the relationship between Father Andrew. They fudged it by having a long dreamlike sequence where they sit and have coffee and talk while music plays and the camera cuts back and forth between them. This is supposed to imply that they talked for hours and got to know and like each other, but in reality it simply implies that their conversation was too tremendously boring to bear, and immediately after that conversation she gets the nails through her feet anyway, to keep your interest.
The rest of the movie is a hodgepodge of The Exorcist, The Omen, and excerpts/misreadings of the Gospel of Thomas (which, by the way, is a real book). The special effects are decent, and both Arquette and Byrne do their best to bring humanity to an otherwise lifeless script. Jonathan Pryce's villainous Cardinal is totally predictable and one of the most inept performances I have ever seen from him.
At the end of the movie, after they have spent so much time on Frankie and made us care about her, she just wanders off, wearing a bedsheet. I swear, that's actually how they get rid of her character; she gets un-possessed, and she just wanders off looking at her wrists wondering where her wounds went. This is heinously bad writing. The movie spends a lot of time getting you to care about Frankie, and then she just...wanders...off? Did she go back and become a hairdresser? Did she keep in touch with excommunicated Father Andrew and go out with him? Did she become a homeless person? Did she drop down a manhole? ANYTHING would have been preferable to just having her wander off into the foggy mist outside the rectory. It's just plain BAD WRITING. It shows contempt for the audience and for the characters, and poor Patricia Arquette, who really puts a lot into this character and in the end gets nothing out of it.
This movie is basically a complete failure; it builds up and builds up, and then the payoff is not only miniscule, but extremely unsatisfactory. It's not unresolved in an "arty" way, the movie is unresolved in a way that screams "BAD SCRIPT!"
In short this is a waste of time except for the special effects. If you're into watching Patricia Arquette thrash around and bleed a lot, and I hope you're not, you might want to watch this movie. Otherwise, don't even bother.