Patricia Arquette – Stigmata (1999, MGM)
It’s fairly common for people to freak out en masse at the turn of a century, and even more so at the turn of the millennium. The years before and after 2000 were no different, with everything from Y2K to the ever-impending rapture threatening to bring our world to an end. No surprise that filmmakers tapped into that frenzy, releasing a whole lot of movies about the end times, including ones that attempted to take the Christian Apocalypse literally.
While not quite as absurd as The Seventh Sign or the action oriented, Schwarzenegger-starring End of Days, Stigmata also lacks the taste and sophistication applied to the subject by Michael Tolkin in The Rapture. Arquette plays an ordinary woman, who inexplicably develops stigmata. A priest (played by poor Gabriel Byrne, who ironically was the devil in End of Days) is sent to investigate whether this is a sign of the impending end. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was one of Arquette’s last leading roles.
